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The La Gleki's

Crash Course in Lojban

The guide to the naturalistic logical language

Published 2015

This crash course is an introduction to Lojban, a logical language. It will allow you to understand most of the Lojban you are likely to see in the online Lojban discussion groups or publications.

Why was this book born?

When I first saw the description of Lojban I was confused. A language where verbs and nouns don't differ. How is that possible? And then I saw those pronounceable smileys... but wait! It is a logical language. Where do emotions come from in the world of logic? These were making me crazy.

If this language can combine those things it must be the most powerful human language in the world. And although I didn't have much free time for such hobbies I decided to look into it deeper.

• I wanted to try new ways of thinking.
• I wanted a beautiful language.
• I wanted a powerful language. Go on reading and you'll get evidence for that.

I also learnt that Lojban allows to say things shorter without unnecessary distracting details. For example, one doesn't have to always think of what tense (past, present or future) to use in a verb when it's already clear from context. When you need details you add them. But unlike other languages Lojban doesn't force you to do so.

And I wanted something easy to grasp. I heard others saying that Lojban is extremely hard to learn but what I discovered later was an amazing simplicity of its structure.

But I decided to write my own course. Why?

When I first opened textbooks on Lojban ... damn it, they were written not for humans for sure. An awkward and boring style making it impossible to learn the language fast. A lot of distracting not necessary details, no solutions for real situations and bulky, bulky, bulky.

And I said "Enough! If you can't explain it yourself then I'll do that, in simple words, with good examples and as concise as possible."

Using this course.

Lojban is likely to be very different to the kinds of languages you are familiar with — which certainly include English. Learning it is much more than just learning its words and grammar: it is more about understanding it. It will make you think about the ways you express ideas in words. Something that you learned and used every day but never tried to understand how it works.

Learning may be easy or hard, depending on how well you understand the ideas behind it. There are not many words and rules that you need to learn to get into a basic level. You will get there rather quickly if you put a systemic effort. On the other hand, if you fail to understand some basic point, memorizing things will not help you much. In such cases don't hesitate to move on, and come back to it later. Likewise, some of the exercises are trickier than others (particularly the translation exercises at the end of each lesson). If you can't work out the answer to a particular question, feel free to skip it — but do look at the answer to the question, as there are often useful hints on Lojban usage in there. The answers to the exercises are at the end of each lesson.

Conventions used in this book.

Lojbanic text is always in bold.

Translations are in italic.

Explanations of the structure of text in Lojban is in such "square" letters.

Brackets are used to clarify the grammatical structure of Lojban in examples. [These brackets are not part of official Lojban orthography, and are included only for clarifying stuff].

Words with their translations are indented.

Examples are in green boxes. This is an example of a case study sentence.

Template:TalkquoteRed Template:Talkquote For more information on Lojban, please contact the Logical Language Group:

• e-mail: [email protected]
• online IRC chat: Web chat
• web-site: mw.lojban.org

---

This course is created by the author La Gleki with the help of the Lojban community throughout year 2015. It is loosely based on the book Complete Lojban Grammar, tutorials Wave Lessons and Lojban For Beginners. Important note: this textbook teaches a simplified and optimized dialect of Lojban called La Bangu.

Lesson 1. The language at a glance

Alphabet

The basic thing you need to know about Lojban is obviously the alphabet.

Lojban uses the Latin alphabet (vowels are colored):

a b c d e f g i j k l m n o p r s t u v x y z ' .

Most letters are pronounced like in English or Latin, but there are a few differences.

There are six vowels in Lojban:

a	as in palm (not as in face)
e	as in get
i	as in machine or (Italian) vino (not as in hit)
o	as in bold or more — not as in so (this should be a ‘pure' sound).
u	as in cool (not as in but)
y	as in comma (not as in misty or cycle)

a, e, i, o, u are pretty much the same as vowels in Italian or Spanish.

The sixth vowel, y sounds like a in the word comma. So it's kind of er or, in American English, uh. y is the sound that comes out when the mouth is completely relaxed (this sound is also called schwa in the language trade).

As for consonants

c	is pronounced as sh (like in shop).
g	always g as in gum, never g as in gem
j	like j in French bonjour or like s in pleasure or treasure.
x	like ch in Scottish loch or as in German Bach, Spanish Jose or Arabic Khaled. Try pronouncing ksss while keeping your tongue down and you get this sound.
'	like English h. So the apostrophe is regarded as a proper letter of Lojban and pronounced like an h. It can be found only between vowels. For example, u'i is pronounced as oohee (whereas ui is pronounced as ooh-eeh).
.	a full stop (period) is also regarded as a letter in Lojban. It's a short pause in speech to stop words running into each other. Actually any word starting with a vowel has a full stop placed in front of it. This helps prevent undesirable merging of two sequential words into one.

Stress is always put on the last but one vowel or shown explicitly using symbol ` before the stressed vowel in order to break this rule. For example, dansu (which means to dance) can be also written as d`ansu to explicitly show the stress. If a word has only one vowel you just don't stress it.

You don't have to be very precise about Lojban pronunciation, because the sounds are distributed so that it is hard to mistake one sound for another. This means that rather than one ‘correct' pronunciation, there is a range of acceptable pronunciation — the general principle is that anything is OK so long as it doesn't sound too much like something else. For example, Lojban r can be pronounced like the r in English, Scottish or French.

Two things to be careful of, though, are pronouncing Lojban i and u like Standard British English hit and but (Northern English but is fine). This is because non-Lojban vowels, particularly these two, are used to separate consonants by people who find them hard to say. For example, if you have problems spitting out the ml in mlatu (which means cat), you can say mɪlatu — where the ɪ is very short, but other vowels: a, u have to be long.

The simplest sentence

Now let's turn to constructing our first sentences in Lojban.

Of course one of your first thoughts might be "Where are nouns and verbs in Lojban?"

Here are three verbs:

pinxe means drinks, to drink.

mlatu means is a cat, to be a cat.

ladru means is a quantity of milk.

It might sound strange how cat and milk can be verbs but in fact this makes Lojban very simple.

Let's imagine we want to say A cat drinks milk.

To turn a verb into a noun we put a short word lo in front of it. And to show a verb we put the word cu in front of the verb.

lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
A cat drinks milk.

Remember that c is pronounced as sh.

• 

  lo mlatu - a cat
• 

  pinxe - drinks, to drink
• 

  lo ladru - milk

So we turned mlatu and ladru into nouns. We can also say that lo creates a noun from a verb with roughly the meaning of one who does (the action of that verb) or one who or which is….

And by using cu we show that the next word, i.e. pinxe is still a verb.

Any verb can be turned into a noun. For example, lo pinxe will mean a drinker.

One more example:

lo plise cu kukte
An apple is tasty.

• 

  lo plise - an apple

Here, lo plise means an apple, kukte means to be tasty and cu shows that the next word is a verb thus separating it from the noun. Template:Talkquote

Pronouns: I, you and others

mi = I

do = you

ra = he, she, it or they

mi'ai = we

ti = this one, this object near me.

ta = this one, this object near you.

tu = that one, that object over there.

Like their English name hints, pronouns work like nouns by default. And they don't require lo in front of them.

mi pinxe
I drink.

do pinxe
You drink.

ti ladru
This is milk.

tu mlatu
That is a cat.

As you can see we can even omit cu after pronouns as we can clearly see the pronoun and the verb being separated.

Nouns and pronouns work exactly the same, and later we'll call them both nouns for brevity.

Unlike English we don't have to add the verb "is/are/to be" to the sentence. Everything is already there: mlatu means to be a cat.

Compound verbs

Now let's talk about compound verbs (tanru in Lojban).

For example,

sutra = to be fast

sutra pinxe = to quickly drink, to drink fast.

Here the verb sutra adds an additional meaning as it is to the left of another verb. The left part is usually translated using adverbs.

Compound verbs are a powerful tool that can give us richer verbs. You just string two verbs together. And the left part of such compound verb adds a flavor to the right one.

We can put lo to the left of such compound verb getting a compound noun. In this case the left part of such compound verb would be usually translated using adjectives or participles:

lo sutra pinxe = a quick drinker.

Now you know why there was cu after nouns in our example

lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
A cat drinks milk.

Without cu it'd turn into lo mlatu pinxe … with the meaning a cat-like drinker whatever that could mean.

Compound verbs can contain more than two verbs. In this case the first verb modifies the second one, the second one modifies the third and so on:

lo sutra bajra mlatu means A quickly running cat whereas

lo sutra mlatu means A quick cat and

lo bajra mlatu means A running cat.

Negation and neutral meaning

• Any verb can be made negative by using nai which means "no" or "not". So mi nelci nai do means literally I like-not you, or in other words, I don't like you.
• Any pronoun can be made negative by using nai:

  mi nai nelci do = Not I like you.

• Any verb can be made middle in its meaning by using cu'i. So mi nelci cu'i do means As for whether I love or hate you, I'm indifferent to you or in other words, I neither like nor hate you.

.i separates sentences

Еhe most precise way of uttering or writining sentences in Lojban would be placing a short word .i in the beginning of each of them:

mi viska lo mlatu .i lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
I see a cat. The cat drinks milk.

.i is the same the full stop (period) at the end of sentence in English.

When saying one sentence after another in English we make a pause (it may be short) between them. But pause has so many different meanings in English. In Lojban we have a better way of understanding where one sentence ends and another begins.

Also note that sometimes when pronouncing words quickly you can't figure out where one sentence ends and the word of the next sentence begins. Therefore it's advised to use the word .i before starting a new sentence.

And and or

do je mi klama lo zdani
You and I go to the house

je means and in Lojban.

lo nanla je lo nixli cu casnu lo karce
A boy and a girl are discussing a car.

It is also possible to use je in compound verbs:

lo sutra je blabi karce cu klama
A quick and white car is moving.

Without je

lo sutra blabi karce cu klama
A quickly white car is moving.

would be funny and make no sense since sutra modifies blabi and blabi modifies karce according to how compound verbs work. So

lo sutra je blabi karce cu klama
A quick white car is moving.

has the intended meaning.

Also notice that omitting lo can cause weird results

lo nanla je nixli cu casnu lo karce

means

Someone who is a boy and a girl (at the same time!) discusses a car.

Don't remove lo when connecting two nouns.

lo nanla je lo nixli cu casnu lo karce
A boy and a girl are discussing a car.

is the correct sentence here.

Let's mention other conjunction words.

lo nanla cu fengu ja bilma
The boy is angry or ill (or may be both angry and ill)

ja = and/or

lo karce cu blabi jo nai grusi
The car is either white or gray.

jo nai = either … or … but not both (although it consists of two words it has a single meaning)

mi prami do .i ju do fenki
I love you. Whether or not you are crazy.

ju = whether or not…

Numbers

Amazing but we haven't said yet how many of our cats are actually drinking milk. The sentence

lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
A cat drinks milk.

is vague in this regard. It can be one cat or even 25 cats drinking milk. Any of such interpretations are possible.

lo simply turned a verb into a noun but now we might want to specify the number.

Let's add a number after of lo.

pa	re	ci	vo	mu	xa	ze	bi	so	no
1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	0

ro = all.

za'u = more than one, plural number

So

lo pa mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
A cat/one cat drinks milk.

For numbers consisting of several digits we just string those digits together.

lo re mu mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
25 cats drink milk.

ro is also used to express the meaning of all.

lo ro mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
All cats drink milk.

 Yes, it's that simple.

Besides, we can say:

ci lo re mu mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
Three out of 25 cats are drinking milk.

or

ro lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
Each, every cat drinks milk.

ro lo re mlatu cu pinxe
All of two cats are drinking (literally)
Both cats are drinking.

So we use lo as a separator in phrases with out of or similar.

Notice that ro lo … means each, every and lo ro … means all.

To say just cats as opposed to a cat (one cat) we use the number za'u.

lo za'u mlatu cu pinxe
Cats are drinking.

whereas

lo pa mlatu cu pinxe = A cat is drinking.

Events

Now let's talk about events and how we express them. The word nu transforms a verb into an event or a process.

pinxe = to drink

lo nu pinxe = drinking



dansu = to dance

lo nu dansu = dancing



jorne = to connect

lo nu jorne = connection



jimpe = to understand, to comprehend

lo nu jimpe = understanding, comprehension

 So lo nu corresponds to English -ing, -tion or -sion.

 As usual we can add to the verb normal words like nouns, pronouns. In fact nu allows us to create a full phrase after itself.

klama = to come

lo nu klama = coming

lo nu do klama = coming of you

Some verbs require using events instead of ordinary nouns. For example

mi gleki lo nu do klama
I'm happy because you are coming.

gleki = to be happy (because of some event).

lo gleki = a happy one, a happy person

Some words are events by themselves.

nicte = (some event) is a nighttime.

lo nicte = night, nighttime

This is where we can see bare nu (without lo).

lo nicte cu nu mi viska lo lunra
The night is when I see the Moon.
The night is the event when I see the Moon.

viska = to see

lo lunra = the Moon

We can combine such words with events together so no lo nu will be used.



lo cabna cu nicte
Now it's night. At present it's night.

lo cabna = present time, (an event) is at present.

Prepositions and tenses

Now let's talk about prepositions related to tense.

pu denotes past tense or before some event

ca denotes present tense or at the same time as some event

ba denotes future tense or after some event

 And now examples:

mi pinxe ca lo nu do klama
I drink while you are coming.

Yes, we need lo nu to insert a whole sentence after ca.

mi citka ba lo nu mi dansu
I eat after I dance.

Now let's talk about tenses.

 English forces us to use certain tenses. You have to choose between

A cat drinks milk.

A cat has been drinking milk.

A cat drank milk.

A cat will have drunk milk.

and other similar choices.

However, in Lojban you can be as vague or as precise as you want.

Our sentence

lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
A cat drinks milk.

in reality says nothing about when this happens. Context is clear enough in most cases and can help us. But if we need more precision we just add more words.

It may be a surprise to you but those prepositions can be used as tenses as well!

The only difference is that we should just drop the noun after pu, ca, ba and they turn into tenses.

So

lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru ca
The cat drinks milk (at present).

lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru pu
The cat drank milk.

lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru ba
The cat will drink milk.

We can also put them before the the main verb.

So we can get

lo mlatu ca pinxe lo ladru
A cat (at present) drinks milk.

As you can see we replaced cu with ca as ca also clearly separates the previous noun from the verb.

 However, we shouldn't say pu lo mlatu as with a noun after it this pu will turn into a preposition. And it would mean before the cat (in time). So here we should use the word nu.

ba nu lo mlatu cu pinxe
The cat will drink.

So we can put the word nu when we want to indicate tense in the beginning of a sentence thus separating it from the noun coming next.

Here are three more prepositions (we'll use them only as tenses for now for simplicity).

ca'o — continuous tense

ba'o — perfect tense

ta'e — habitually

Now we can say even more precisely

lo mlatu ca ca'o pinxe lo ladru
A cat (at present) is drinking milk.

Here we get a very precise translation of an English sentence that has what is called Present Continuous tense in English.

There is also Present Simple tense that describes events that happen sometimes.

lo mlatu ca ta'e pinxe lo ladru
A cat (habitually, sometimes) drinks milk.

For Perfect we use ba'o.

lo mlatu ca ba'o pinxe lo ladru
A cat has drunk milk.

Of course we could omit ca in this sentence (I'm sure that the context would be clear enough in most such cases).

We can use the same rules for describing the past using pu instead of ca or the future using ba. Template:Talkquote

We can combine tenses with and without phrases after them.

mi pu citka ba lo nu mi dansu
I ate after I danced.

Note, that pu (past tense) is put only in the main phrase (mi pu citka).

 We shouldn't put it with dansu (unlike English) as mi dansu is viewed relative to mi pu citka so we already know that everything was in past.

 Let's take one more useful preposition.



mi pu sipna ze'a lo nicte
I slept all night. I slept through the night.

Let's compare it with ca.

mi pu sipna ca lo nicte
I slept at night.

ze'a = some (medium length of time), during, through some time.

sipna = to sleep

lo nicte = a nighttime

When using ze'a we are talking about the whole interval of what we describe.  Don't forget that nicte is an event so we don't need nu here.

Other prepositions

Other prepositions work the same way. 

fa'a = towards …, in the direction of …

to'o = from …, from the direction of …

bu'u = at … (some place)

se ja'e = because … (of something)

mi klama fa'a do to'o lo mlatu
I go to you from a cat.



mi cadzu bu'u lo tcadu
I walk in the city.

The interesting thing about prepositions is that you can freely move them with with nouns after them around the sentence as you like without changing the meaning.

fa'a do mi ca klama je to'o lo mlatu
Towards you I go from a cat.

to'o lo mlatu mi je fa'a do ca klama
From a cat I (and towards you) go.

je is necessary as it makes prepositions equal, not affected by one another.

As you can see Lojban is very flexible.

One thing is important. When using nu you create a separate phrase inside the big sentence. Be sure not to mix nouns and prepositions from different phrases and the big one. Here is an example:

plipe
to jump

lo mlatu cu plipe fa'a mi ca lo nu do klama
A cat jumps towards me when you come.

is the same as

lo mlatu cu plipe ca lo nu do klama vau fa'a mi
A cat jumps (when you come) towards me.

 We use vau after each phrase when we want to show its border.  However,

lo mlatu cu plipe ca lo nu do klama fa'a mi
A cat jumps (when you come towards me).

As you can see do klama fa'a mi is a phrase inside the big one. So fa'a mi is now inside it.

Now you, not the cat come towards me.

At the end of the sentence vau is never needed as it's already the right border.

Names. Choosing a name

1. cmevla, or a name word is a special kind of verb. It is mostly used to build personal names. You can easily recognize cmevla in a flow of text as they always end in a consonant. In Lojban only cmevla end in a consonant.

Besides, it is common to wrap them by one dot from each side. Examples are: .paris., .robin.

If one's name is Bob then we can create a cmevla ourselves that would sound as close as possible to this name, for example .bob.

And then we prefix it with the word la so that it would work just like a noun - la .bob.. The word la is similar to lo but it converts brivla not to a simple noun but to a name (cmene in Lojban).

So the most simple example of using a name would be

la .bob. cu tcidu
Bob reads/is reading.

tcidu = to read

Template:Talkquote Well, Bob is lucky because his name goes directly into Lojban without any changes. The same for the name Lojban. Of course it's a cmevla and is written as .lojban.

la .lojban. cu bangu mi
Lojban is the language used by me. (literally)
Lojban is the language I use.
I speak Lojban.

However, as you might guess Lojban spelling is quite transparent and therefore there are some rules for adapting names to how they are written in Lojban. This may sound strange — after all, a name is a name — but in fact all languages do this to some extent. For example, English speakers tend to pronounce Jose something like Hozay, and Margaret in Chinese is Magelita. Some sounds just don't exist in some languages, so the first thing you need to do is rewrite the name so that it only contains Lojban sounds, and is spelt in a Lojban way.

Let's take the English name Susan. The two s's are pronounced differently — the second one is actually a z — and the a is not really an a sound, it's the ‘schwa’ we mentioned in the first chapter. So Susan comes out in Lojban as .suzyn..

Here are the names that we'll use all over this book:

.alis.	Alice
.bob.	Bob
.ian.	Yan or Ian
.jasmin.	Jasmine
.kevin.	Kevin
.meilis.	Mei Li

And here are some examples of Lojbanizing other names:

.an.	Anne
.axmet.	Ahmet
.eduard.	Edward
.IBraxim. or .IBra'im.	Ibrahim
.odin.	Odin

• Two extra full stops (periods) are necessary because if you didn't put those pauses in speech, you might not know where the name started and ended, or in other words where the previous word ended and the next word began.
• The last letter of a cmevla must be a consonant. And if a name doesn't end in a consonant we usually add use s to the end; so in Lojban, Mary becomes .meris., Joe becomes .djos. and so on. An alternative is to leave out the last vowel, so Mary would become .mer. or .meir..
• You can also put a full stop in between a person's first and last names (though it's not compulsory), so Jim Jones becomes .djim.djonz.

Other verbs as names

You can use not only cmevla, but also other types of verbs to choose your nickname in Lojban. If you prefer, you can translate your name into Lojban (if you know what it means, of course) or adopt a completely new Lojban identity. Template:Talkquote

Here are a few examples of Lojbanic names:

• Robin (also a name of a bird)
  • turdida - American robin in Lojban
  • la turdida - your name
• Björn (means bear in Scandinavian)
  • cribe - bear in Lojban
  • la cribe - your name
• Mei Li (means beautiful in Mandarin Chinese)
  • melbi - beautiful in Lojban
  • la melbi - your name

Lesson 2. More basic stuff

Place structure

Lojban dictionaries present all verbs with x1, x2 etc. symbols as e.g.

prami
x1 loves x2

There is nothing strange in these x1, x2. They are called places and simply represent the order in which you have to add nouns. E.g.

mi prami do
I love you.

This also means that

x1 means to love and

x2 means to be a loved one.

The advantage of such style of definitions is that compared to English there is no need in many additional words as all participants of this love are in one definition.

We can also omit nouns making the sentence more vague:

prami do (literally loves you) means Someone loves you.

Alternatively you can replace unnecessary places with the word zo'e = something/someone.

zo'e prami do
Someone loves you.

which will mean the same as prami do.

The place structure of compound verbs is the same as the of the last verb word in it:

tu sutra bajra bruna mi
That is a quickly running brother of me
That is my quickly running brother.

So the place structure is the same as of bruna alone.

More than two places

There might be more than two places. E.g.

pinxe
x1 drinks x2 from x3

mi pinxe lo ladru lo kabri
I drink milk from a cup.

lo kabri
a cup

In this case there are three places and if you want to exclude the second place in the middle you have to use zo'e:

mi pinxe zo'e lo kabri
I drink [something] from a cup.

If we omitted zo'e we'd get

mi pinxe lo kabri
I drink a cup.

which would make no sense.

Guessing place structure

Places of verbs might sometimes sound hard to remember. But let's not worry — we don't have to memorize all of them. In fact nobody does (do you remember the meaning of hundreds of thousands of words in English?) There are a few cases where it's worth learning the place structure to avoid misunderstanding, but usually you can guess place structure using context and a few rules of thumb.

1. The first place is often the person or thing who does something or is something:

   klama = x1 goes ...

2. The object of some action is usually just after the first place:

   punji = x1 puts x2 ..., dunda = x1 gives x2 (gift)...

3. And the next place will usually be filled with the recipient:

   punji = x1 puts x2 on x3 ..., dunda = x1 gives x2 (gift) to x3 (recipient)...

4. Destination (to) places nearly always come before origins (from) places:

   klama = x1 goes to x2 from x3

5. Less-used places come towards the end. These tend to be things like ‘by standard’, ‘by means’ or ‘made of’.

The general idea is that the places which are most likely to be filled come first. You don't have to use all the available places, and any unfilled places at the end are simply missed out.

zo'e and da

zo'e can denote different things every time:

zo'e tavla zo'e zo'e
Someone talk to someone about something or someone.

which in the correct context might actually mean:

My friend talks to his father about his girlfriend.

da also means something/someone like zo'e. Usually it is translated as There is something/someone that …

mi tavla da
A talk to someone. or more correctly There is someone I talk to.

tavla = x₁ talks to x₂ about x₃

But there is an important rule: if you use da the second time in the same sentence it always means the same thing as the first da.

da tavla da
Someone talk to themselves.

da tavla da da
Someone talk to themselves about themselves.

This is its difference from zo'e.

Places for nouns

How do we say You are my friend ?

do pendo mi
You are my friend.
You are a friend of me (literally)

And now how do we say My friend is crazy.?

lo pendo be mi cu fenki
My friend is crazy.

So when we convert a verb into a noun (pendo - to be a friend into lo pendo - a friend) we can still retain other places of that verb by placing be after it.

By default it attaches the second place (x2). We can attach more places by separating them with bei.

For example:

mi dunda lo cukta do
I give the book to you.

lo cukta = book

• 

  lo pendo - friend/friends
• 

  lo cukta - book/books
• 

  mi dunda lo cukta - I give a book.

And now

lo dunda be lo cukta bei do
The grantor of the book to me

lo dunda be lo cukta bei mi cu pendo mi
The giver of the book to me is my friend.

The one who give the book to me is a friend of mine.

Another example:

bangu = x₁ is a language used by x₂ to express ideas x₃

la .lojban. cu bangu mi
Lojban is my language.
Lojban is a language of me. (literally)

How to translate the following phrase?

I like my language.

The answer is

mi nelci lo bangu be mi

We can't elide be because lo bangu mi are two independent nouns (well, the second one is a pronoun but it's all the same in Lojban). We also can't use nu because lo nu bangu mi is some event about my language. So lo bangu be mi is a correct solution to the problem.

Using be for not-converted verb words has no effect: mi nelci be do is the same as mi nelci do.

What if I want to attach nouns from several places to a noun? The giver of the apple to you is lo dunda be lo plise be do, right? Nope.

plise = x₁ is an apple of species/variety x₂

The second be attaches to the apple, meaning lo plise be do - The apple of the strain of you, which makes no sense. So lo dunda be lo plise bei do is the correct solution.

Relative clauses

Let's look at these two sentences.

1. The cat that is white is drinking milk.
2. The cat, which is white, is drinking milk.

In the first sentence the word "that" is essential to identifying the cat in question, it clarifies which cat we are talking about. Out of probably many cats we choose only those who are white. May be there is only one cat around that is white like in this example.

As for "which is white" from the second sentence it just provides additional information about the cat. It doesn't help us to identify cats. For example, this might happen when all the cats are white.

In Lojban we use poi for the first sentence and noi for the second sentence.

lo mlatu poi blabi cu pinxe lo ladru
The cat that is white is drinking milk.

lo mlatu noi blabi cu pinxe lo ladru
The cat, which is white, is drinking milk.

blabi = to be white

This poi blabi is a relative clause, a mini-phrase attached to the noun lo mlatu. It ends just before the next word cu.

So we actually additionally state in the sentence that lo mlatu cu blabi - the cat is white.

Let's have a more interesting example.

lo tricu = a tree

barda = to be big/large

klama = to go to something

lo tricu noi mi klama ke'a cu barda
A tree, to which I go, is big.

Note the word ke'a. It replaces the noun lo tricu to which our relative clause is attached.

So literally our Lojbanic sentence sounds like

A tree, such that I go to which, is big.

Note that we can always extract this relative clause and make it an independent sentence by replacing ke'a with the noun to which this relative clause was attached.

So this big sentence also mention in passing that mi klama lo tricu = I go to a tree.

ke'a can be dropped if we are to place it just after noi or poi. That's why the two sentences mean the same:

lo mlatu poi blabi cu pinxe lo ladru
lo mlatu poi ke'a blabi cu pinxe lo ladru
The cat that is white is drinking milk.

Short relative clauses

Sometimes you might need to attach additional noun to another noun.

mi djuno zo'e pe do
I know something about you.

pe and ne are similar to poi and noi but connect nouns to nouns:

lo penbi pe mi = a pen that is mine (mine is essential to identifying the pen in question)

lo penbi ne mi = a pen, which is mine (additional information)

ne - non-restrictive relative phrase. "which is associated with... (noun follows)"

pe - restrictive relative phrase. "that is associated with... (noun follows)"

be and pe

Notice that relative clauses are attached to nouns whereas be connects to the verb that is transformed into a noun afterwards.

Actually, lo bangu pe mi is a better translation of my language, since this phrase, like the English, is vague as to how the two are associated with each other.

However, you can say lo birka be mi as my arm. Even if you saw off your arm, it'll still be yours. That's why birka has a place of the owner:

birka = x₁ is an arm of x₂

Notice that be attaches to the verb word. But pe, ne, poi and noi are attached to nouns. For example,

lo melbi be mi cukta pe lo pendo cu barda
The liked by me book of my friend is big.

Here, be mi is applied only to the verb melbi = to be beautiful to … (someone). But pe lo pendo is applied to the whole noun lo melbi be mi cukta = the beautiful to me book.

Another common way of saying my is transforming pronouns and personal names into verbs using the particle me.

E.g. mi is pronoun by itself. We need to turn it into a verb word.

me turns nouns (as well as pronouns and personal names) into verbs. After getting me mi we can readily use it in compound verbs.

me mi verba = my child.

tu me mi verba – this is my child.

lo and me have opposite functions.

Parts of speech

Let's quickly mention the correct terms describing Lojban grammar and how Lojban sentences are constructed.

There are three types of nouns:

1. lo-noun is lo + a verb.
2. pronouns are mi - I, tu - that and others
3. name is la + a verb.

As they mostly work the same way we will usually call them just nouns unless we need to be more specific. In Lojban nouns are called sumti.

In a Lojbanic phrase cu separates the phrase head to the left (one or more nouns) from the tail of the phrase on the right (the verb possibly with nouns after them).

In lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru the part lo ladru is the head and pinxe lo ladru is the tail.

The phrase head can be omitted. And there might be no nouns after the verb relation: karce, vanci. Let's see it ourselves.

The simplest phrase (called bridi in Lojban) would be

prami
[Someone] loves.

Such short phrase can be useful sometimes. For example when you see a car coming you would simply say

karce
Car!

because the context will be clear enough that there is a car somewhere around and probably it's dangerous.

Or you can say

vanci

in the sense

It's getting dark.

although vanci just means evening.

carvi
It is raining.

Notice that in Lojban there is no need in the word it in such sense. You just use the verb you need.

• 

  prami - loves
• 

  karce - … is a car
• 

  vanci - … is an evening
• 

  carvi = … is a rain

All omitted places just mean zo'e = something/someone

So

prami
Loves.

means the same as

zo'e prami zo'e
Someone loves someone.

Also you can add prepositions (sumtcita) like ca:

ra ca citka
He/she now eats.

So in other words.

bridi = optionally one or more sumti + one selbri + one or more sumtcita

or in English

phrase = optionally one or more nouns + one verb relation of the phrase + one or more prepositions.

The verb relation, or predicate (selbri in Lojban) describes relationships of nouns. It can be represented as a single verb word (brivla) or as a compound verb (tanru).

Here are some examples of nouns and verb relations.

ti ladru
This is milk.

Here ti is a noun and ladru is the verb relation consisting of one verb word.

lo mlatu cu sutra pinxe
A cat quickly drinks.

Here lo mlatu is a noun (sumti) and the compound verb sutra pinxe works as the verb relation (selbri).

tanru, or compound verbs consist of two or more verb words. Each left verb word is called seltau compared to the right one called tertau. tanru has the place structure of the most rightward tertau:

tu sutra bajra bruna mi
That is a quickly running brother of me
That is my quickly running brother.

So the place structure is the same as of bruna alone.

Verbs and particles

All Lojban words are divided into two groups: particles (cmavo) and verbs (brivla).

Particles (cmavo) are short words like lo, cu, je, pu, ca, ba, mi, do, ti. They can be divided by their meaning and function into groups that are called selma'o. E.g. pu, ca, ba belong to the group PU. This is just an illustration, there is no need in memorizing the names of selma'o. But it's convenient to memorize them by those groups. Template:Talkquote Verbs (brivla) are divided into 4 groups by their form:

1. gismu, or root-words are main building blocks of Lojban vocabulary. gismu are easy to recognise, because they always have five letters, in the form

   CVCCV — e.g. ladru, gismu, sumti, or

   CCVCV — e.g. mlatu, cmene, bridi, klama

   where C=consonant and V=vowel.

   Verbs in the following forms are created when there is no appropriate verb in gismu list:

2. lujvo, or compound words. They are created from short building blocks (called rafsi) used for mnemonic purposes.

   Examples are: reisku, kargau

3. zi'evla, or free words. They are usually created for specific concepts and things like igloo (iglu in Lojban), spaghetti (spageti in Lojban).
4. cmevla, or name words.

Task. Close the right part of the table. Which of the following Lojban words are brivla, cmevla (remember, they always end in a consonant), neither?

Note: I've the full stops are removed in the cmevla below to make the task a bit more tricky ;).

lojban	cmevla
karce	brivla
robin	cmevla
mi	cmavo
mlatu	brivla
cukta	brivla
fa'a	cmavo
to'o	cmavo
ian	cmevla
ba	cmavo
spageti	brivla

Free word order. Prepositions for places

We've seen that if we don't need all the places (and we rarely do), then we can miss out the unnecessary ones at the end of the phrase. We can also miss out the first place if it is obvious (just like in Spanish). However, it sometimes happens that we want places at the end, but not all the ones in the middle. There are a number of ways to get round this problem.

One way is to fill the unnecessary places with zo'e, which means something or someone. So mi klama lo tcadu lo purdi zo'e lo karce tells us that I go to a city from a garden by car, but we're not interested in the route she takes. In fact zo'e is always implied, even if we don't say it. If someone says klama, what they actually mean is

zo'e klama zo'e zo'e zo'e zo'e

but it would be pretty silly to say all that.

Most people don't want more than one zo'e in a sentence (though there's nothing to stop you using as many as you like).

A more popular way to play around with places is to use the place tags fa, fe, fi, fo, fu - those are particles of the class (selma'o) FA. These mark a noun as being associated with a certain place of the verb, no matter where it comes in the sentence:

1. fa introduces what would normally be the first place
2. fe the second place
3. fi the third place
4. fo the fourth place
5. fu the fifth place

For example, in

mi klama fu lo karce
I go in the car. or I go by car.

fu marks lo karce as the fifth place of klama (the means of transport). Without fu, the sentence would mean I go to the car.

After a place introduced with a place tag, any trailing places follow it in numbering. So in

mi klama fo lo tcadu lo karce
I go via the city by car.

lo tcadu is the fourth place of klama, and lo karce is understood as the place following the fourth place — i.e. the fifth place.

With place tags you can also swap places around. For example,

fe lo cukta cu dunda fi lo nanla
The book was given to a boy.

(The book — lo cukta — is the second place of dunda, what is given; a boy — lo nanla — is the third place of dunda, the recipient).

Again, you probably don't want to overdo place tags, or you'll end up counting on your fingers (although they're very popular in Lojban poetry — place tags, that is, not fingers).

Interesting, according to the grammar we can put all the nouns of one verb relation in front of the verb (preserving their relative order). Because of this freedom we can say:

mi do prami which is the same as
mi prami do
I love you.

be allows using FA tags too by placing FA after be:

lo dunda fi lo nanla cu pendo mi
The one who give something to a boy is my friend.

Free word order. New nouns from the same verb

A final way to change places is conversion, which actually swaps the places round in the verb.

do dunda ti
You give this.

dunda = to give (something).

Template:Talkquote You can choose another style and say

ti se dunda do
This is given by you.

do dunda ti means exactly the same as ti se dunda do! The difference is solely in style.

You may want to change things around for different emphasis (people tend to mention the more important things in a sentence first). So the following pairs mean the same thing:

mi viska do
I see you.

do se viska mi
You are seen by me.

lo nu mi tadni la .lojban. cu xamgu mi
My study of Lojban is good for me.

mi se xamgu lo nu mi tadni la .lojban.
For me it's good to study Lojban.

So the word se inverts the order of first two nouns of any verb. There are no rules for which method you use: conversion or using FA, and you can use them in any way you want, so long as the person you're talking to understands.

As we remember, when we add lo in front of a verb it becomes a noun. So lo dunda means something(s) which could fit in the first place of dunda.

lo dunda = a giver, a donor, a donator

As dunda actually means not just to give but to donate (something) it defines that the noun after it (the second argument) is actually something that is given.

Well, therefore it's a gift.

In Lojban we don't need a separate word for a gift. It's much easier.

If a verb word has the second argument you can prefix it with se and it will refer to the second place of that verb:

It's just

lo se dunda = something that is given, a gift

For the ease of understanding and memorizing predicate words prefixed with se are put into the dictionary as well together with their definitions although you can easily figure out their meaning yourself.

So you don't have to memorize numerous interconnected words. Lojban is much easier. We save a lot of words because of such clever design.

Indeed, we can't imagine a gift without implying that someone gave it or will give it. When phenomena are connected Lojban reflects this.

Changing other places in verb relations

se is part of a series of particles which go, in alphabetical order, se, te, ve, xe. Like a lot of these series, the first one (se) is used a lot more than the others, but sometimes the others are useful.

• se changes round the first and second places
• te changes round the first and third places
• ve, the first and fourth, and
• xe, the first and fifth.

mi'ai vitke do lo zdani
You visit me at home.

lo zdani cu te vitke do mi'ai
Home is where you are being visited by us.

The mi'ai has now moved to a less conspicuous place in the sentence, and so can now be dropped out without being missed if we are too lazy to specify who exactly visit you:

lo zdani cu te vitke do
Home is where you are being visited.

In fact place conversion is often used when we want to get rid of places like this.

mi tugni zo'e lo nu vitke lo rirni
mi tugni fi lo nu vitke lo rirni
I agree [with someone unspecified] about visiting parents.

lo nu vitke lo rirni cu te tugni
Visiting parents is what [I] agree about.

tugni = x₁ agrees with x₂ about x₃

lo prenu cu klama zo'e zo'e zo'e lo trene
lo prenu cu klama fu lo trene

The person goes somewhere, from somewhere, via somewhere, by train.

lo trene cu xe klama
[Someone] goes by train.
Literally, By a train is gone.
A train is a vehicle.

klama = x₁ goes to x₂ from x₃ through x₄ via x₅

The more extreme conversions like ve and xe are rarely used, partly because most verb words only have two or three places, and partly because even with four- or five-place verbs, the less-used places are less needed in ordinary speech.

Similarly to our example with lo se dunda (a gift) we can use te, ve, xe to get more words from other places of verbs.

lo prenu cu dunda lo cukta mi
A person gives a book to me.

lo prenu can also be lo dunda - the giver. But what about the noun describing mi and lo cukta? Well, you probably guessed.

mi te dunda lo cukta

This means that mi can be lo te dunda - the recipient. In the same way, lo cukta can be lo se dunda - the gift or the thing given. So if we want to make a really obvious sentence, we can say

lo dunda cu dunda lo se dunda lo te dunda
The donor gives the gift to the recipient.
The giver gives the given-thing to the person-to-whom-it-is-given

To have

The English verb to have has several meanings.

birka mi
Something is an arm of me
I have an arm.

birka = x₁ is an arm of x₂

mi cortu lo birka be mi
I feel pain in my arm.
My arm hurts.

cortu - x1 feel pain in part of body x2

If you keep a dog at home:

mi ralte lo gerku
I keep a dog., I have a dog.

mi ralte lo karce
I have a car.

ralte = x₁ keeps x₂ in their possesion

If you possess something according to some law or documents you should use ponse:

mi ponse lo vi bakni lo vi se ciska
I own this cow according to what is written here.

ponse - x1 owns x2 according to the law/document/custom x3

vi - preposition: near …, by default without a noun after it or with zo'e means here (i.e. near this place)

For expressing family relationship we use a very simple strategy in Lojban:

da bruna mi or mi se bruna da
There is someone who is a brother of me. (literally)
Someone is my brother.
I have a brother.

So we don't need the verb "to have" to denote such relationship. The same for other family members:

da mamta mi or mi se mamta da = I have a mother.

da patfu mi or mi se patfu da = I have a father.

da mensi mi or mi se mensi da = I have a sister.

da panzi mi or mi se panzi da = I have a child.

Prepositions inside nouns

When using nu we create a verb phrase. Verb phrases can end in prepositions.

lo nu tcidu ca cu nandu
The current reading is complicated, difficult.

Notice, the difference from

lo nu tcidu cu ca nandu
The reading is now complicated.

If we omit cu our phrase will turn into a compound verb:

lo nu tcidu ca nandu
The current reading complication.

Another examples:

mi klama lo cmana pu
I go to a mountain (in past)
I went to a mountain.

lo nu mi klama lo cmana pu cu pluka
That I went to a mountain is pleasant.

When not using nu we don't have phrases. Nouns start with lo and end in a verb relation (like a single or a compound verb). Thus you can insert prepositions to nouns only before that verb relation:

lo ba'o kunti tumla ca purdi
The one that has been empty land now is a garden.'
What was once a desert is now a garden. (approximate translation)

So ba'o belongs to lo kunti tumla and ca belongs to purdi (as lo ba'o kunti tumla can't add ca in the end).

As you can't place prepositions after the verb relations

lo kunti tumla ba'o purdi means
The desert is no longer a garden.

Infinitives

Infinitives are verbs that are often prefixed with "to" in English. Examples include "I like to run" with "to run" being the infinitive.

How can we say

The cat wants to drink.

lo mlatu cu djica lo ka pinxe

It's the same as

lo mlatu cu djica lo nu lo mlatu cu pinxe
The cat wants that the cat drinks (literally)

The first translation sounds more natural and compact so using ka is preferred in such case.

The particle ka works much like nu but it indicates that the noun on the left does or would do the action following ka. It makes the first noun of the outer verb (djica in this case) also the first noun of the embedded verb started by ka (pinxe in this case) so you don't have to repeat this noun the second time.

Another example with a pronoun in the place of the first noun

mi djica lo ka pinxe
I want to drink.

or

mi djica lo nu mi pinxe
I want that I drink (literally)

Again the first sentence looks smarter.

As for I want you to drink it's simple mi djica lo nu do pinxe. First pronouns of djica differs from the one from pinxe so we can't use ka here.

It is also possible to use ka when we usually don't use infinitive in English

mi gleki lo ka jinga
I'm glad of winning.

which is the same as

mi gleki lo nu mi jinga
I'm glad that I won.

A common way of asking How do you do?: Template:TalkquoteRed

Lesson 3. Interjections. Questions. Quoting

sei

The particle sei begins an embedded discursive verb phrase. This particle allows us to insert comments about our attitude to what is being said, or how we feel about something. Example:

do jinga sei mi gleki
You won! (I'm happy about that!)

In fact .ui means the same as sei mi gleki so we could just say do jinga .ui.

However, look at this:

do jinga sei la .ian. cu gleki
You won! (And Yan is happy about that!)

The grammar of the verb phrase following sei has an unusual rule: the noun must either precede the verb relation, or must be glued into the verb relation with be and bei:

la .alis. cu prami sei la .bob. cu gleki la .kevin.

Let's add brackets to make it more easily readable.

la .alis. cu prami (sei la .bob. cu gleki) la .kevin.
Alice loves (Bob is happy) Kevin.
Alice loves Kevin (Bob is happy).

Or we can use be to add a second place for the phrase inside sei.

do jinga sei manci be mi
You won! (this amazed me)

Interjections

Sometimes sei and its verb phrase might be too lengthy for expressing a simple attitude. That's why in Lojban we have short particles called interjections, or attitudinal indicators. The most basic ones consist of two vowels, sometimes with an apostrophe in the middle. Here are some of the most useful ones with some examples.

Urging interjections

.a'o	I hope			.a'onai	despair
.a'u	interest (Hm …)	.a'ucu'i	no interest	.a'unai	repulsion
.au as in how	desire	.aucu'i	indifference	.aunai	reluctance
.e'a	permission (like in I allow you…, you may come in etc.)			.e'anai	prohibition
.e'i	constraint (I have to…)	.e'icu'i	independence	.e'inai	resist to constraint
.e'o	request (Please …)			.e'onai	negative request
.e'u	suggestion	.e'ucu'i	no suggestion	.e'unai	warning
.ei as in hey	obligation (I should …)			.einai	freedom

Attitude interjections

.ai as in high	intent (I'm going to…)	.aicu'i	indecision	.ainai	refusal
.ia like German Ja	belief	.iacu'i	skepticism. allegedly	.ianai	disbelief
.i'e	approval	.i'ecu'i	non-approval	.i'enai	disapproval
.ie like yeah	agreement			.ienai	disagreement
.ii	fear (Think of Eeek!)	.iicu'i	nervousness	.iinai	security
.io	respect			.ionai	disrespect
.iu like you	love	.iucu'i	no love lost	.iunai	hatred
.o'u	relaxation	.o'ucu'i	composure	.o'unai	stress
.oi as in boy	complaint/pain	.oicu'i	doing OK	.oinai	pleasure
.u'e	wonder (like in Wow!)			.u'enai	commonplace
.u'i	amusement			.u'inai	weariness
.u'u	repentance (Sorry, I'm sorry!)	.u'ucu'i	lack of regret	.u'unai	innocence
.ua as in waah!, or French quoi	discovery. Eureka! Ah, I get it!			.uanai	confusion. I don't get it, Duh…
.ue as in question	surprise	.uecu'i	no surprise	.uenai	expectation
.ui like we, or French oui	I'm happy			.uinai	I'm unhappy
.uo as in quote	completion (Voila!)			.uonai	incompleteness
.uu as in woo	pity			.uunai	cruelty
je'u	Yes, it's true			je'unai	No, it's false, not true

While being photographed instead of "cheese" say .ui (sounds like English "we"). It means I'm happy in Lojban and produces the best smile due to its special sounding.

As you can see the emotion is turned into its opposite by adding nai, so .ui is an interjection of happiness while .uinai means I'm unhappy, and so on. This is unlike verbs and nouns where nai just means not. By adding cu'i we create an emotion in the middle. Not all interjections are meaningful with cu'i. One of the most used ones is .a'ucu'i - no interest (while .aunai denotes repulsion).

You can also combine interjections. For example, .iu .uinai would mean I am unhappily in love. In this way you can even create words to express emotions which your native language doesn't have. Another example:

.ue .ui do jinga

Oh, you won! I'm so happy!

where jinga = to win.

In this case the victory was unprobable, I'm surprised and happy at the same time.

Another great thing about interjections is that you can attach them next to any noun, pronoun or verb thus expressing your attitude towards that part of the sentence.

lo mlatu .ue cu pinxe lo ladru
A cat (surprise!) is drinking milk.
A cat (wow, how unexpected!) is drinking milk.

You can as well attach interjections to the right of any verb relation. Or put it in the beginning of any sentence thus changing your attitude to the whole sentence.

.o'u tu mlatu
(relaxation!) that is a cat.
Oh, that's only a cat.

In this case you probably thought that was something dangerous but it's only a cat so you are saying .o'u.

You can pile several interjections to any part of the sentence. For example,

Forgot to put an interjection in the beginning?

What if you forgot to put an interjection in the beginning of a verb phrase?

mi jinga
I win.

Now you want to add .ui so that it modifies the whole phrase. In

mi jinga .ui

.ui modifies only the verb jinga.

No problem here. You just add vau in the end and then the interjection that you need.

mi jinga vau .ui
I win, yay!

vau - a particle. Show that the verb phrase just ended.

Commands

How do we do commands and requests in Lojban?

For example, if I want you to run, I'd probably say:

Run!

Now the verb for to run is bajra.

How do we do this in Lojban? We can't copy English grammar and just say bajra, since it can just mean the same as zo'e bajra, someone or something runs. It would be too vague. Instead we say

do ko'oi bajra

do bajra means You run. And ko'oi is an interjection that turns You runю into a command, request, desire, hope or suggestion.

do ko'oi is so useful and frequent in speech that in spoken Lojban it is also common to use a contraction of it, the word ko. It's just a shorter synonym of do ko'oi.

We can put it in any place where we put do transforming it into commands, e.g.

nelci ko

nelci = to like Template:Talkquote This means something like 'Act so that someone likes you, and sounds pretty odd in English, but you could use it in the sense of Try to make a good impression. Another example is:

mi dunda lo cifnu ko
Act so that I give the baby to you.

with the possible meaning Stop playing the piano — I'm going to pass you the baby.

As noted earlier any interjection modifies only the part of the sentence that it follows. Moving ko'oi to another part moves command/request to that part.

You can even have several ko'oi in one sentence.

do ko'oi kurji do ko'oi

which in short form would be

ko kurji ko
orko ko kurji
[Act so that] you take care of you.

As for ko'oi itself it is mostly used when applying to other pronouns (not do). E.g.

mi'ai ko'oi klama
Let's go.

Here ko'oi is applied to the pronoun mi'ai (we) although in ordinary speech it would probably be contracted to just

ko'oi klama

which is equivalent to

ko'oi zo'e klama

Polite requests

As ko'oi is rather vague sometimes we need to be more precise. E.g. often we need to ask polite questions. Foreigners in England often make the mistake of thinking that putting please in front of a command makes it into a polite request, which it doesn't (in English we usually have to make it into a question e.g. Could you open the window?) Fortunately, in Lojban, ‘please’ really is the magic word. Putting the word .e'o before a sentence turns it into a request; e.g.

.e'o do dunda lo cukta mi

is literally Please give me the book, but is actually more like Could you give me the book, please? (Of course, norms of politeness in English do not necessarily translate into other languages, so it is better in such cases to be safe than sorry).

Modifying interjections

Several interjections modify the interjection to the left of them:

• When we put nai after an interjection it turns it into its opposite.

• When we put cu'i after an interjection it turns it into the middle attitude.
• When we put dai after an interjection we show listener's attitude.

  .o'adai do jinga - You must be proud since you won

• When we put pei after an interjection it turns it into a question.

  .iepei lo ninmu cu melbi - do you agree the the woman is pretty?

A common pitfall to avoid is trying to specify whose attitude the interjections express. The reason interjections are so simple is that they express direct emotional or attitudinal responses — gut reactions, without making any fine distinctions like whose attitude is involved. The reaction is always taken to be the speaker's. So .ui do cliva means that you're happy that someone else is leaving, just like You're leaving — Yay! does. If you wanted to say that the someone else is happy, not you, then you wouldn't say Yay! at all. Instead, you'd say something like You must be happy you're leaving. The same goes in Lojban: if you're relaying someone else's responses, not your own, then that's what the verb phrase are there for.

You wouldn't likely make this mistake for .ui'. But .ei (expresses obligation) is the worst offender. .ei mi cliva means I should leave. But .ei do cliva doesn't necessarily mean You ought to leave. It's more like I feel the obligation for you to leave. I can say this if I want you gone while you're making yourself comfortable — but not if you've remembered you've got to be somewhere else, while I'd want nothing more than for you to stick around.

The temptation to use interjections for others' reactions is strong enough, in fact, that there are a couple of ways of getting around it. If you add the modifer dai, you're saying that the emotion is someone else's, and that you are empathizing with them. If .a'u is That's interesting!, .a'u dai is more like That must have been interesting for you! If you add the modifier se'i, you say that you feel the emotion for yourself. If you add se'i nai, then, you say that you feel it for someone else: .uise'inai is pretty much I'm happy for you!

Intensity of attitude

You can divide up the continuum even more finely. If you want to say that you have an only weak attitude, you can add the particle ru'e to the corresponding interjection. sai is used for expressing strong degree of an attitude. Extremely strong attitude is cai. This gives you a seven-part scale:

cai > sai > (nothing) > ru'e > cu'i > nai ru'e > nai > nai sai > nai cai

So for instance, if you want to say Eh. That's cool, you'd say .a'ucu'i. If you want to say That is really gross!, you'd say .a'unaisai. And if you want to say Oh my God, that is the most interesting thing in the world since the very invention of Lojban!, .a'ucai is a pretty safe bet.

Questions

In English, we make a yes/no question by changing the order of the words (e.g. You are … - Are you …) or putting some form of do at the beginning (e.g. Does she smoke?). This seems perfectly natural to someone whose native language is English (or German), but is actually unnecessarily complicated (as any speaker of Chinese or Turkish will tell you).

We can turn any proposition into a yes/no question by simply putting pei somewhere in the sentence but not after an interjection, e.g. at the beginning.

Some examples:

pei do nelci lo gerku?
Do you like dogs?

pei mi klama
Am I coming?

pei crino
Is it green?

There are two ways to answer these questions. Lojban, like some other languages, does not have words that mean yes or no. One way to answer yes is to repeat the selbri e.g.

pei do nelci lo gerku
nelci

As pei is an interjection we can put it after certain parts of the questions shifting the meaning.

Some possible explanations of such shift in emphasis are given in brackets.

pei do nelci lo gerku
Do you like dogs?

do pei nelci lo gerku
Do YOU like dogs?
(I thought it was someone else who likes them).

do nelci pei lo gerku
Do you LIKE dogs?
(I thought you were just neutral towards them).

do nelci lo gerku pei
Do you like DOGS?
(I thought you liked cats).

As you can see what is expressed using intonation in English is expressed by moving pei to different parts of the sentence. Note, that the first sentence asks the most generic question without stressing any particular aspect.

Now how to reply to such 'yes/no' questions?

By simply using an appropriate interjection.

pei do nelci lo gerku
Do you like dogs?

je'u
Yes
True.

or

je'unai
no
Not true.

Other often suitable interjections are .ie (I agree) and .ienai (I disagree), pe'i (In my opinion it's true).

Once again you can use .iepei, pe'ipei to ask question but in this case the listener will be forced to use .ie, .iecu'i, .ienai, pe'i etc. when replying.

Content questions

English also has a number of wh- questions — who, what etc. In Lojban we use one word for all of these: ma. This is like an instruction to fill in the missing place. For example:

do klama ma
la .london.
Where are you going?
London.

ma klama la .london.
la .kevin.
Who's going to London?
Kevin.

mi dunda ma do
lo cukta
I give what to you? (probably meaning What was it I was supposed to be giving you?)
The book.

In fact combining prepositions or relative clauses with ma can give us other useful questions:

ca ma = When? (literally, during what)

bu'u ma = Where? (literally, at what)

ma poi prenu = Who? (literally, what that is a person)

ma poi dacti = What? (about objects) (literally, what that is an object)

se ja'e ma = Why? (literally, because of what)

mo is like ma, but questions a verb relation, not a noun — it's like English What does x do? or What is x? (remember, Lojban doesn't force you to distinguish between being and doing!) We can see mo as asking someone to describe the relationship between the nouns in the question. Template:TalkquoteRed

Another example:

do mo la .kevin.
You ??? Kevin
What are you to Kevin?

The answer depends on the context. Possible answers to this question are:

• nelci: I like him.
• pendo: I am his friend
• prami: I adore/am in love with him.
• xebni: I hate him.
• fengu: I'm angry with him.
• cinba: I kissed him

We've said that mo can also be a What is … type of question. The simplest example is tu mo — What is this? You could also ask la .meilis. cu mo, which could mean Who is Mei Li?, What is Mei Li?, What is Mei Li doing? and so on. Again, the answer depends on the context. For example:

• ninmu: She's a woman.
  

  lo ninmu - a woman
• jungo: She's Chinese.
• pulji: She's a policewoman.
• sanga: She's a singer or She's singing.
• melbi: She's beautiful. (possibly a pun, since this is what meili means in Chinese!)

There are ways to be more specific, but these normally involve a ma-question; for example la .meilis. cu gasnu ma (Mei Li does what?).

Number questions

The word xo means How many? and thus asks for a number.

lo xo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
How many cats drink milk?

The answer might be:

bi
Eight.

The full answer will be:

lo bi mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
8 cats drink milk.

So the person being asked is supposed to put an appropriate value in place of xo.

A few more examples:

lo xo botpi cu kunti
How many of the bottles are empty?

lo xo prenu cu klama ti
How many people come here?

do viska lo xo sonci
How many soldiers do you see?

Indirect questions

Consider a sentence

I know who is learning Lojban.

This is called an indirect question. There is no question mark in this sentence, the question is not stressed. In fact you yourself know the answer to the question Who is learning Lojban?

That's why the translation is:

mi djuno lo nu ma kau tadni la .lojban.

kau is an interjection that you put after a question word telling that its an indirect question.

You can tell that the word who in that statement is not a request for information, because it is not at the start of the sentence, there's no question mark (or questioning intonation), and the question word is not being emphasized.

If I ask you the question ma tadni la .lojban., you know what value to fill in the ma slot with: la .kevin. So you could just say

mi djuno lo nu la .kevin. cu tadni la .lojban.

This all means that mi djuno lo du'u ma tadni la .lojban. can never be an indirect question: it is asking for an answer (even if you're doing it rhetorically).

You can put it after other question words:

mi djuno lo nu lo xo kau prenu cu tadni la .lojban.
I know how many people study Lojban.

The waiter asks Jasmine and Alice lanme ji bakni = lamb or beef? Once they answer, he knows whether they want to eat lamb or beef; in Lojban,

ba'o lonu la .jasmin. je la .alis. cu spusku vau lo bevri cu djuno lo du'u re ra djica lo ka citka lo lanme ji kau bakni
Having Jasmine and Alice replied, the waiter knows whether they two want to eat lamb or beef.

But

mi djuno lo du'u da kau tadni la .lojban. means
I know that there is someone who studies Lojban.

Other examples:

ma tadni la .lojban.

means

Who is studying Lojban?

By the same token,

mi djica lo nu ma tadni la .lojban.
I want who to study Lojban?
Who do I want to study Lojban?

And

mi pu cusku lo se du'u ma tadni la .lojban. is
I said who is studying Lojban?
Who did I say is studying Lojban?

mi djuno lo du'u makau tadni la .lojban.
I know who is studying Lojban. I know the identity of the person studying Lojban.

Introducing yourself. Vocatives

Another type of interjections are vocatives. They function exactly the same as emotional indicators we just discussed but they can have one noun attached after them.

For example,

mi'e
self-introduction; identifies speaker.

When do we use it? Watch any film where people don't know each other's language. They start off saying things like "Me Tarzan", which is as good a place to start learning Lojban as any. So here we go.

mi'e la .robin.
I-am-named Robin
I'm Robin.

And when you address people by name, you usually do so to make it clear who out of a group you are talking to. The word doi is used to show who you're talking to.

doi la .robert. mi cliva
Robert, I'm leaving.

cliva = to leave

Without doi the name might become the first noun of the phrase. doi a bit like English O (as in O ye of little faith) or the Latin vocative (as in Et tu, Brute). Some languages don't distinguish between these contexts although as you can see Old English and Latin did.

Vocatives exist to manage our conversations: to make someone pay attention to our turn, to butt in before it is our turn, to signal that a conversation is beginning or ending, and so on. They are used in conversations over two-way radio or in internet chats, because it is impossible to talk over each other, or to determine whose turn it is to speak when visual cues are absent. This means that Lojban vocatives look a little like a CB enthusiast's nightmare, because the meanings in the dictionary you see for them come from this more explicit subset of English.

Here are mostly popular vocatives:

• doi is used for general addressing someone.
• mi'e is the word you use to introduce yourself: it's followed by the speaker's name, rather than the listener. So mi'e la .robin. means I'm Robin or This is Robin speaking.
• co'oi is the greeting/parting word much like Italian ciao: it corresponds to Hello / Bye.
• coi is the word for greetings only: it corresponds to Hi, Hello, Good morning, Wazzup?, and whatever else happens to be in vogue.

• 

  cerni - morning
• 

  vanci - evening
• 

  donri - daylight time
• 

  nicte - night

• di'ai - well-wish.

pluka = to be pleasant to … (someone)

We use di'ai here because Good night! is not a greeting but a well-wish actually. Thus we use a different vocative here. Although, you can be vague by saying pluka nicte (just meaning pleasant night without any wishes explicitly said).

• co'o is the farewell word, corresponding to Goodbye, Farewell, Yo Later Dude, and so on. Lojbanists signing off on e-mail often end with something like co'o mi'e .robin. — this is equivalent to putting your name at the end of your email in English as a signature, and translates as Goodbye; I'm Robin.
• ju'i - Hey!, with which you draw someone's attention, and
• fi'i - Welcome! At your service!, with which you offer hospitality or a service. (It's what you say to a visitor; you wouldn't say it over the phone, for instance, unless your addressee is calling from the airport and is on their way over).
• ki'e - Thank you and the appropriate response is not fi'i (You're welcome doesn't mean you're being visited by some guests), but the simple acknowledgement je'e.
• je'e corresponds to Roger! in radio-speak, and right or uh-uh in normal English: it confirms that you've received a message. If you haven't, you say je'enai instead (of course); in normal English, that would be Beg your pardon? or Huh?
• In case you haven't received the message clearly, you can explicitly ask for the speaker to repeat whatever they said with ke'o.
• Similarly, be'e signals a request to send a message (Hello? Are you there?), and re'i indicates that you are ready to receive a message. It's what you say when you pick up the phone — which in English also happens to be Hello?, but in Italian is Pronto or Ready!
• mu'o is what you say when you explicitly make it another speaker's turn to speak: it's the Over! of radio.
• vi'o acknowledges a request, and promises to carry it out: in radio talk this is Wilco!, and in normal English OK or All right, I will (or for that matter, Consider it done!)

Vocatives take nouns after them. However, the rule is that you can drop lo making it more vague:

coi gleki
Hello, friends!
can mean both
coi lo gleki - Hello, a happy one or
coi la gleki - Hello, Happy (a personal name) depending on context.

If you use the vocative on its own (without a noun after it) and the sentence is not finished yet then you need to separate it from the rest, because the things likeliest to follow the vocative in a sentence could easily be misconstrued as describing your addressee. Use the word do for that. For example,

coi do la .alis. la .meilis. pu cliva
Hello! Alice left Mei Li.
Hello you! Alice left Mei Li (literally)

coi la .alis. la .meilis. pu cliva
Hello, Alice! Ranjeet's just left.

And if you want to put both vocatives and interjections modifying the whole sentence please put interjections first:

.ui coi do la .alis. la .meilis. pu cliva
Yay, Hello! Alice left Mei Li.

Note that in the beginning of sentences usually interjections are put before vocatives because

coi .ui do la .alis. la .meilis. pu cliva

means

Hello (I'm happy about this greeting) you! Alice left Mei Li.

So an interjection immediately after a vocative modifies that vocative. Similarly, interjection modifies the vocative noun when being put after it:

coi do .ui la .alis. la .meilis. pu cliva
Hello you (I'm happy about you)! Alice left Mei Li.

Comments and quotes

Quoting text

sei is also useful for quoting text.

mi prami la .mark. sei ra cusku
I love Mark! - she said.

Phrases inside sei work at a “higher” level of abstraction than the phrase outside sei-phrase, and that outer phrase cannot refer to the sei-phrase. Specifically, such words as ri or ra or other ways of saying he/she we just covered, ignore the utterances at “higher” levels in determining their referent.

mi viska la .mark. sei la suzan pu cusku i ri jibni la .djein.

I see Mark, - Susan said. He is near Jane.

In this example ri cannot refer to la .suzan. We simply ignore the whole sei la suzan pu cusku phrase when deciding what ri should refer to.

Quotation marks

It is possible, and sometimes necessary, to refer to lower metalinguistic levels. For example, the English she said in a conversation is metalinguistic. For this purpose, quotations are considered to be at a lower metalinguistic level than the surrounding context (a quoted text cannot refer to the statements of the one who quotes it), whereas parenthetical remarks are considered to be at a higher level than the context.

Lojban works differently from English when it comes to marking she said instead of the quotation.

We make such quotations by placing the word lu before the quote and placing li'u after it.

For example,

mi cusku lu mi prami do li'u
I say "I love you."

cusku = x₁ expresses/says x₂ (quotation) for audience x₃ via expressive medium x₄

lu and li'u are like ‘quote’ and ‘unquote’ — they put something someone says into a noun.

This sentence literally claims that John said (uttered / wrote) the quoted text. If the central claim is that John made the utterance, as is likely in conversation, this style is the most sensible.

However, in written text which quotes a conversation, you don't want the he said or she said to be considered part of the conversation. If unmarked, it could confuse speakers and listeners what ri or ra refers to. In such cases it's better to use sei.

It's interesting that quotation marks in English are not spoken out. They are only written. Instead while speaking we make a short pause to show the beginning and the end of quotations. Lojban can't be that ambiguous. That's why we use those handy quotation words.

You can also nest quotations, e.g.

la .ian. pu cusku lu la .djein. pu cusku lu coi li'u mi li'u
Yan said "Jane said ‘Hello’ to me."

which is similar to

la .ian. pu cusku lu la .djein. pu rinsa mi li'u
Yan said "Jane greeted me."

Lojban is very careful to distinguish between words for things, and the things themselves. So you can't speak about the phrase "the universe") in the same way you speak about the universe itself. To give a silly example, the phrase lo munje is small, but the universe itself is not. To distinguish between the two in Lojban, you need to use quotation:

lu lo munje li'u cu cmalu
‘The universe’ is small.

lo munje na cmalu
The universe is not small.

Template:Talkquote Interjections and vocatives work like sei constructs:

.ui mi jinga sei ra cusku
Yippee, "I won", he said.

As you can see .ui is not his words. It's your attitude to the phrase. If you want to quote ".ui mi jinga" use quotation marks getting:

lu .ui mi jinga li'u se cusku ra
"Yippee, I won", he said.

See the difference between the two examples?

Now several verbs related to talking:

cusku = x₁ expresses/says x₂ (quotation) for audience x₃ via expressive medium x₄

reisku = x₁ asks x₂ (quotation) for audience x₃ via expressive medium x₄

spusku = x₁ replies/says answer x₂ (quotation) for audience x₃ via expressive medium x₄

piksku = x₁ makes comment x₂ (quotation) for audience x₃ via expressive medium x₄

As you can see all of those verbs have the same place structure so it's easy to remember them. And here are some more verbs:

spuda = x₁ replies to x₂ by doing x₃

tavla = x₁ talks/speaks to x₂ about subject x₃ in language x₄

ciska = x₁ write x₂ on x₃ (surface/paper...)

Note the different place structures of cusku, tavla and ciska.

• With cusku the emphasis is on communication; what is communicated is more important than who it is communicated to. Quotes in e-mails frequently start with do cusku di'e (di'e is a particle that means ‘the following’) as the Lojban equivalent of You wrote.
• With tavla the emphasis is rather more on the social act of talking: you can tavla about nothing in particular.
• ciska places more emphasis on the physical act of writing.

- ra pu reisku lo sedu'u mi klama makau - She asked where I was going.

- mi pu spusku lo sedu'u mi klama lo zdani - I replied that I was going home.

- mi pu spuda lo se reisku be ra lo ka spusku lo sedu'u mi klama lo zdani - I replied to her question by saying in reply that I was going home.

Indirect quotations (reported speech)

A phrase like Alice said "Robin said "Hello" to me". can also be expressed in a rather more subtle way:

la .alis. pu cusku zo'e pe lo nu la .robin. pu rinsa ra
Alice in past expresses something about Robin in past greets her.
Alice said something about Robin greeting her before.

or a bit shorter:

la .alis. pu cusku lo se du'u la .robin. pu rinsa ra
Alice in past expresses that Robin in past greets her.
Alice said that Robin had greeted her.

What is this se du'u? This combination allows us to express indirect speech.

Simple du'u is used in Lojban in some places of verbs instead of nu, e.g.:

djuno = x₁ knows x₂ (du'u, fact) about x₃ by reasoning x₄

mi djuno lo du'u do stati
I know that you are smart.

It's not a mistake to use nu instead of du'u but it is recommended to use du'u if the dictionary says du'u should go in that place. But what is the difference between them?

Lojban has different words for that…, depending on what sort of thing is meant.

• If that introduces something that happened, use nu. (Events can be subdivided more finely yet, but for now let's not complicate matters even more than necessary).
• If that introduces something that you think, use du'u. This is how you can guess where to put nu and where to put du'u.

If that introduces something that you say, use se du'u. But if it's a literal quote use lu … li'u.

zo - quoting one word

zo is a quotation marker, just like lu. However, zo quotes only one word immediately after it. This means it does not have an unquote word like li'u: we already know where the quotation ends. Thus we save two syllables making our speech more concise. Template:TalkquoteRed Oh yes, this is how you present yourself in Lojban using your lojbanised name. Of course, if you have a name consisting of more than one verb word then use lu … li'u.

lu robin djonson li'u cmene mi
Robin Johnson is my name.

Another way is to use me. It means one of those that are …

mi me la robin djonson
I'm Robin Johnson.

Lesson 4. Practice

Dialogue: First meeting

Now we know about so many things that we can start talking.

coi la .Alis.
Hi, Alice! (coi - Hello, la - shows that a name follows. Capital letter in .Alis. is used for stylistic purposes.)

coi la .Mark.
Hi, Mark!

do mo?
How are you? (do = you, do mo - you are what? what can you say about yourself?)

mi kanro .i mi bredi lo ka tavla
I'm healthy. And I'm ready to talk. (mi = I, kanro = to be healthy, .i - separates sentences, bredi = to be ready, tavla = to talk)

xamgu .i ma tcima ca lo bavlamdei?
Good. What will be the weather tomorrow? (xamgu = to be good, ma = what?, tcima = weather, ca - during, lo bavlamdei = tomorrow)

mi djuno nai .i lo solri sei mi pacna
I don't know. It'll be sunny, I hope. (djuno = to know, nai = not, lo solri = the sun, sei - discursive comment, pacna = to hope)

mi jimpe
I understand. (jimpe = to understand)

co'o
Goodbye.

The whole dialogue once again:

coi la .Alis.

coi la .Mark.

do mo?

mi kanro .i mi bredi lo ka tavla

xamgu .i ma tcima ca lo bavlamdei?

mi djuno nai .i lo solri sei mi pacna

mi jimpe

co'o

Spelling styles. Capital letters

Capital letters are optionally used in Lojban for stylistic purposes:

la .Alis. is the same as la .alis.

And a capital letter alone has a special meaning. It denotes the name of that letter:

A is the same as .abu, B is the same as by. and so on. They means the same and even are read the same as normal .abu, by. etc.

Punctuation can also be used to help visually structure the text. However, punctuation is used only as a decoration. It doesn't add any meaning to the text.

The symbol . (dot) can be used as we use dot in English (i.e. as a punctuation mark) but its main purpose in Lojban is that it is a proper letter that denotes a pause.

Senses

You should be careful with the words for senses since in Lojban they are very powerful compared to natural languages.

viska = x₁ sees x₂ (form, object, color)

viska lo tarmi be ... = x1 sees the form of ... (something with that form)

viska lo se skari be ... = x1 sees the color of ... (something with that color)

mi viska lo plise
I see an apple.
mi viska lo tarmi be lo plise i ri se tarmi lo cukla
I see the form of an apple. The apple is round.

plise = x1 is an apple

mi viska lo se skari be lo plise i ri skari lo xunre
I see the color of the apple. The apple is colored red.

tirna = x₁ hears x₂ (sound)

tirna lo sance be ... = x1 hears the sound of ... (something that produces that sound)

mi tirna lo palta
I hear a plate.
mi tirna lo sance be lo palta poi ca'o porpi i ri se sance lo cladu
I hear the sound of a plate that is falling. It sounds loud.

Or we can use cladu and similar words directly:

mi tirna lo cladu = I hear something loud.

mi tirna lo tolycladu = I hear something quite in sound.

mi tirna lo tonga be lo paplta poi farlu = I hear the tone of the plate falling down.

sumne = x₁ smells x₂ (odor)

sumne lo panci be ... = x1 smells the odor of ... (something with that odor)

mi smaka lo plise
I taste the apple.
mi smaka lo tasta be lo plise i ri se tasta lo kukte
I taste the taste of the apple. The apple tastes sweet.

smaka = x₁ smacks, tastes x₂ (taste)

smaka lo tasta be ... = x1 smells the taste of ... (something with that taste)

sumne lo plise
I smell the apple.
mi sumne lo panci be lo plise i ri se panci lo xrula
I smell the odor of the apple. The apple smells flowerish.

palpi = x₁ palpates, touch-feels x₂ (surface)

palpi lo sefta be ... = x1 touch-feels the surface of ... (something with that surface)

mi palpi lo plise
I palpate, touch feel the apple.
mi palpi lo sefta be lo plise i ri se sefta lo xutla
I touch feel the surface of the apple. The apple has a smooth surface.

Also instead of "to see", "to smell" you can just use the vague ganse - to sense.

ganse = x₁ senses x₂ (object, event) by means x₃

ganse lo tarmi be ... = x1 senses the form of ... (something with that form, means of sensing is unspecified)

mi ganse lo plise
I sense an apple.
mi ganse lo tarmi be lo plise i ri se tarmi lo cukla
I sense the form of an apple. The apple is round.

Note that English confuses smelling some odor and smelling something that produces that odor. We say to smell an apple, the apple smells of flowers (has the scent of flowers). This two-fold distinction is important because an apple produces aromatic particles that are distinct from the apple itself. The same for a falling plate and its sound - those are different things.

In Lojban you can easily separate between those cases like shown in the examples above.

You can ask precise questions like

- do tirna ma poi sance = What sound do you hear?
- lo zgike = a music

- do tirna lo sance be ma = You hear a sound of what?

- lo plise poi co'i farlu = An apple that has fallen down

co'i = preposition. Describes an event as a whole.

Some words can be used with different sensory verbs. For example, you can

viska lo sefta = see the surface

palpi lo sefta = palpate the surface

Other special feelings:

cortu = x₁ feels pain in x₂ (organ, part of x₁'s body)

mi cortu lo cidni
I feel pain in my knee my knee hurts.

cidni = x1 is a knee of x2

ganse lo glare = to feel the heat

ganse lo lenku = to feel the cold

Colors

gusni = x₁ (energy) is a light illuminating x₂ from the light source x₃

carmi = x₁ is intense/bright/saturated/brilliant in property (ka) x₂

Health

cortu = x₁ feels pain in x₂ (organ, part of x₁'s body)

mi cortu lo cidni
I feel pain in my knee my knee hurts.

cidni = x1 is a knee of x2

kanro = x₁ is healthy

bilma = x₁ is ill or sick with symptoms x₂ from disease x₃

mikce = x₁ cures or treats x₂ for disease x₃ with medicine x₄

la zukam = common cold (disease)

lo influenza = influenza, flu

glare = x₁ is hot

lenku = x₁ is cold

Human body

xadni = x₁ is a body of x₂

All of these words have the same place structure as xadni:

stedu = x₁ is a head of x₂

There is one exception:

degji = x₁ is a finger/toe on part x₂ of body x₃

degji lo xance = x1 is a finger

degji lo jamfu = x1 is a toe

Kinship

Again notice the consistency in place strucre of the following verbs:

prenu = x₁ is a person (in fairy tales and fantastic stories animals and alien being from other planets can be persons)

remna = x₁ is a human

Those two words are for humans only:

ninmu = x₁ is a woman

nanmu = x₁ is a man

Those two words can be used for describing both animals and humans:

fetsi = x₁ is female

nakni = x₁ is a man

lanzu = x₁ is a family including x₂

speni = x₁ is a husband/wife of x₂

mi co'a speni la .suzan.
I married Susan.

rirni = x₁ is a parent of x₂

mamta = x₁ is a mother of x₂

patfu = x₁ is a father of x₂

panzi = x₁ is a child of x₂

tixnu = x₁ is a daughter of x₂

bersa = x₁ is a son of x₂

tunba = x₁ is a sibling (brother/sister) of x₂

mensi = x₁ is a sister (older/younger) of x₂

bruna = x₁ is a brother of x₂

Age:

citno = x₁ is young

laldo = x₁ is old, aged

Emotions

badri = x₁ is sad about x₂

gleki = x₁ is happy about x₂

terpa = x₁ fears x₂

cinmo = x₁ feels emotion x₂

nelci = x₁ likes x₂

prami = x₁ loves x₂

manci = x₁ feels awe or wonder about x₂

steba = x₁ feels frustration about x₂

se cfipu = x1 is confused about x2

cisma = x₁ smiles

cmila = x₁ laughs

fengu = x₁ is angry about x₂

kucli = x₁ is curious of x₂

xajmi = x₁ thinks x₂ is funny

se zdile = x₁ is amused by x₂ (zdile = x1 is amusing)

surla = x₁ relaxes (by doing x₂)

djica = x₁ desires x₂

pacna = x₁ hopes that x₂ is true

nitcu = x₁ needs x₂

kakne = x₁ is capable of x₂ (mi kakne lo ka bajra = I can run.)

Basic notions

Movements:

zvati = x₁ is present at x₂

klama = x₁ goes to x₂ from x₃ (gau do lo tanxe cu klama lo cnita = You move the box down.)

vofli = x₁ flies to x₂ from x₃

cnita = x₁ is below x₂

gapru = x₁ is above x₂

zunle = x₁ is to the left of x₂

pritu = x₁ is to the right of x₂

Basic actions:

zbasu = x1 creates, makes x2 from x3 (components, raw materials)

jgari = x₁ holds x₂

cpacu = x₁ gets x₂ from x₃

te cpacu = x₁ gives x₂ to x₃

dunda = x₁ gives the gift x₂ to x₃

lebna = x₁ takes x₂ from x₃

benji = x₁ sends x₂ to x₃

te benji = x₁ receives x₂ to x₃

punji = x₁ puts x₂ onto x₃

Vehicles:

marce = x₁ is a vehicle carrying x₂

karce = x₁ is a car carrying x₂

bloti = x₁ is a boat carrying x₂

vinji = x₁ is an aircraft carrying x₂

trene = x₁ is a train of cars x₂

Body postures:

sanli = x₁ stands on x₂

zutse = x₁ sits on x₂

vreta = x₁ lies on x₂

Basic things:

djacu = x₁ is some water

xamsi = x₁ is some soil

xamsi = x₁ is a sea

terdi = x₁ is the Earth

tsani = x₁ is the sky

vacri = x₁ is some air

Animals and plants:

danlu = x₁ is an animal

cinki = x₁ is an insect

spati = x₁ is a plant

grute = x₁ is a fruit

mudri = x₁ is some wood

In the shop:

vecnu = x₁ sells x₂ to x₃

te vecnu = x₁ buys x₂ from x₃

pleji = x₁ pays x₂ to x₃ for x₄

jdima = x₁ is the price of x₂

jdini = x₁ is money

rupnusudu = x₁ costs x₂ US dollars

rupne'uru = x₁ costs x₂ euro

Shop, buildings

stuzi = x₁ is a place

dinju = x₁ is a building, house

zdani = x₁ is a home of x₂

se zdani = x₂ lives in x₂, x₁ inhabits x₂

tcadu = x₁ is a city or town

jarbu = x₁ is a suburban are of city/town x₂

nurma = x₁ is a rural area, x₁ is in the country

kumfa = x₁ is a room

vikmi kumfa = x₁ is a toilet

zarci = x₁ is a shop

Lesson 5. They, math and time

he and she

So far we've been referring to everybody by name, which can get very repetitive if you want to tell a story, or even string two sentences together. Consider the following:

la .alis. cu klama lo barja .i la .alis. ze'a pinxe lo vanju .i la .alis. cu zgana lo nanmu .i lo nanmu cu melbi .i lo nanmu cu zgana la .alis.
Alice goes to the bar. Alice drinks some wine for a while. Alice notices a man. The man is beautiful. The man notices Alice.

• 

  lo melbi - beautiful, handsome, pretty
• 

  lo se pluka - nice, pleasant

It is tedious to have to keep repeating Alice and man. English gets round this problem by using pronouns, like she or he. This works OK in this case, because we have one female and one male in the story so far, but it can get confusing when more characters enter the scene. (It's even more confusing with languages that only have one word for he, she and it, like Turkish or spoken Chinese).

In English we use words "he, she, they" very often. Lojban gives us more possibilities

• The particle ri refers to the last noun used in the discourse.
• The particle ra refers to one of the last nouns used in the discourse.
• We can also use the first letters of last nouns or names, e.g. say "R" instead of "Robin" if we were talking about Robin.

la .alis. cu sipna lo kumfa pe ri
Alice sleeps-in the room of [last noun].
Alice sleeps in her room.

The ri here is equivalent to repeating the last noun or name, which is la .alis., so it is equivalent to:

la .alis. cu sipna lo kumfa pe la .alis.
Alice sleeps-in the of-Alice room.
Alice sleeps in Alice's room.

Note that ri does not repeat lo kumfa pe ri (which is also a noun), because ri is inside that noun and therefore that noun is not yet complete when ri appears. This prevents ri from getting entangled in paradoxes of self-reference. (There are plenty of other ways to do that!)

Note also that nouns within other nouns, as in quotations, abstractions, and the like, are counted in the order of their beginnings; thus a lower level noun like la .alis. in that last example is considered to be more recent than a higher level noun that contains it.

Most pronouns are ignored by ri. It is simpler just to repeat these directly:

mi prami mi
I love me.
I love myself.

However,

1. the particles ti, ta, tu are picked up by ri, because you might have changed what you are pointing at, so repeating tu may not be effective.
2. likewise, ri itself (or rather it's antecedent) can be repeated by a later ri; in fact, a string of ri particles with no other intervening nouns always repeat the same noun:

la .djan. cu viska lo tricu .i ri se jadni lo jimca pe ri
John sees the tree. [last noun] is-adorned-by the branch of [last noun].
John sees the tree. It is adorned by its branches.

Here the second ri has as antecedent the first ri, which has as antecedent lo tricu. All three refer to the same thing: a tree.

Also a vaguer ra is provided. The particle ra repeats a recently used noun. The use of ra forces the listener to guess at the referent, but makes life easier for the speaker. Can ra refer to the last noun, like ri? The answer is no if ri has also been used. If ri has not been used, then ra might be the last noun. A more reasonable version of the previous example, but one that depends more on context, is:

lo smuci .i lo forca .i la rik. pilno ra
A spoon. A fork. Rick uses [some previous thing].

Here the use of ra tells us that something other than la .rik. is the antecedent; lo forca is the nearest noun, so it is probably the antecedent. Similarly, the antecedent of raxire must be something even further back in the utterance than lo forca, and lo smuci is the obvious candidate.

The meaning of ri must be determined every time it is used. Since ra is more vaguely defined, they may well retain the same meaning for a while, but the listener cannot count on this behavior.

Names of letters in Lojban

Each letter has a name in Lojban.

The following table represents the basic Lojban alphabet and how to pronounce letters (below each letter):

'	a	b	c	d	e
.y'y.	.abu	by.	cy.	dy.	.ebu
f	g	i	j	k	l
fy.	gy.	.ibu	jy.	ky.	ly.
m	n	o	p	r	s
my.	ny.	.obu	py.	ry.	sy.
t	u	v	x	y	z
ty.	.ubu	vy.	xy.	.ybu	zy.

As you can see

• to get the name for a vowel, we add "bu"
• to get the name for a consonant, we add "y"
• the word for ' (apostrophe) is .y'y.

We can spell word using these names. For example, CNN will be cy. ny. ny.

Letters instead of he and she

There is another method of referring to nouns and names previously mentioned in speech.

la robin cu viska lo mlatu i lo mlatu cu viska nai la robin
Robin sees a cat. The cat doesn't see Robin.

As the first letter in robin is "r" and the first letter in mlatu is "m" we can use names of letters to refer to nouns that we get from them.

la robin cu viska lo mlatu i my. viska nai ry.

This means the same.

So if you see a Lojban letter being used as a noun, you take it as referring to the last noun or name whose verb word (robin and mlatu in this case) starts with that letter.

Clearly, this method is more powerful than he or she.

But notice that it can happen that we'd like to refer back to, say, lo mlatu, but then before we can do so, another noun or name that starts with "m" appeared in the meantime, so that my. can no longer refer to the cat. The quickest way out is to repeat the entire noun or name, i.e. lo mlatu.

Only you decide what's to use in speech: the method with ri and ra or the method with letter names.

Myself, themselves

mi nelci mi
I like myself.
I like me (literally)

or

mi lumci mi
I wash myself.

lumci = x₁ washes x₂ of contaminant x₃ with x₄

In some languages like Russian people say literally I wash self. In order to be closer to Russian style we can use lo nei which always refers to the first noun of a verb phrase:

mi nelci lo nei

which is the same as

mi nelci mi

or we can say

la ian cu lumci lo nei
Yan washes himself.

which is the same as

la ian cu lumci ri

Remember that ri can't refer back to pronouns like mi so lo nei might be preferred as it doesn't change.

And of course, when changing the first noun lo nei doesn't change which is quite handy:

mi lumci lo nei, do lumci lo nei, la ian cu lumci lo nei ...

• lo nei links to the first noun of the current verb phrase
• lo se nei links to the second
• lo te nei to the third and so on.

Here are some more straightforward examples of its use:

la meilis. cu pensi lo nei
Mei Li thinks about herself.

lo gerku cu batci lo nei
The dog bites itself.

Okay, this is all well and good when your sentence only contains one verb phrase. But when it doesn't — and it often doesn't — we have a problem. In

la .jasmin. cu djuno lo nu la .alis. cu prami lo nei
Jasmine knows that Alice loves herself.

lo nei refers to la .alis.

Here is the solution:

la .jasmin. cu djuno lo nu la .alis. cu prami vo'a
Jasmine knows that Alice loves her.

So while lo nei refers to the first noun of the current phrase, vo'a refers to the first noun of the current sentence.

When there are no embedded phrases those two words mean the same:

la .alis. cu prami vo'a is the same as la .alis. cu prami lo nei
Alice loves herself.

• vo'a refers to the first noun of the current sentence.
• vo'e refers to the second noun of the current sentence.
• vo'i refers to the third noun of the current sentence.
• vo'o refers to the 4th noun of the current sentence.
• vo'u refers to the 5th noun of the current sentence.

Some Lojbanists use ra in order to refer to such "self"-places, which is deliberately as vague as pronouns in natural languages.

go'i for the previous phrase

• nei alone links to the current verb phrase.
• go'i links to the previous verb phrase.

They both belong to the group GOhA.

go'i presents yet another way of referring back to a noun that we need.

Whereas lo nei refers to the first noun of the current verb phrase, lo go'i refers to the first noun of the previous verb phrase.

la .alis. cu klama lo barja .i la .alis. cu viska lo nanmu

can be changed to:

la .alis. cu klama lo barja .i lo go'i cu viska lo nanmu

Using se and its series can be used with all verbs. We can construct a phrase like

lo go'i cu go'i lo se go'i lo te go'i lo ve go'i lo xe go'i

On its own, this sentence doesn't mean terribly much; it just repeats the previous sentence that has at lest 5 places. But the trick is, this version of the sentence repeats the previous sentence, with its noun appearing explicitly. This is how we can refer back to a noun in the previous sentence in general. For example,

.i la .alis. cu zgana lo nanmu .i ri melbi

can also be expressed as

.i la .alis. cu zgana lo nanmu .i lo se go'i cu melbi

That's because lo se go'i refers to the second place (x2) of the preceding phrase, which is lo nanmu.

Consider another example:

Bill saw Bob. He hit him.

English doesn't bother with precision here — he just means ‘some male person mentioned earlier.’ Did Bill hit Rick, or did Rick hit Bill? We don't know. Lojban does have other tricks up its sleeve, and as you might just have already guessed, lo se go'i will do the trick.

la bil cu viska la bob i lo se go'i cu darxi lo go'i

Although, in most cases ri, ra or using first letter of names are to choose from:

la bil cu viska la bob i ri darxi la bil or

la bil cu viska la bob i la bob cu darxi ra.

A little math. Logical 'yes/no' questions

How to say 5=2+3 ?

li mu du li re su'i li ci

Here li is similar to lo but it makes the following word a number. So li mu means Number 5 for use in formulae unlike simple mu which is used to denote 5 objects or events.

du is a verb and means to be equal to.

• su'i means plus.
• vu'u means minus.
• pi'i means times and is used for multiplication
• fe'i means divided by and is used for division.

The word pi is a decimal separator so no pi mu means 0.5, ci ze pi pa so means 37.19.

In some notations 0.5 can be written as .75 and in Lojban we can also drop zero saying pi mu.

Here are some other examples.

li pare fe'i ci du li vo = {{{2}}}

li re pi'i re du li vo = two times two is four

li pano vu'u mu pi'i li re du li no = {{{2}}}

Notice that you put li only once before the equation and once after it. Thus 12 : 3 is considered one number. Indeed, 4 is the same as 12 : 3. They are both numbers.

Whereas pei is used for questions in ordinary speech and ask for our attitude, opinion etc. on a given topic the word xu is used to ask 'yes/no' questions related to logic and mathematics. xu works like an interjection.

xu li mu du li re su'i ci
Is 5 = 2 + 3?

For the answer we should use go'i, which repeats the last verb phrase (without the question).

go'i
Yes.

na go'i
No.

na is a negation word quite common in "math style". It negates the whole verb phrase when put just before the verb relation: before go'i in this case.

For asking for a number we use ma:

li ci su'i vo du ma
3 + 4 = ?

The answer would be:

li ze
7

Most, many and too much

Words like most and many are also numbers in Lojban, which is pretty logical if you think about it. The following ‘numbers’ are particularly useful:

ro	each
so'a	almost all
so'e	most
so'i	many / a lot of
so'o	several
so'u	few
no	zero, none
su'e	at most
su'o	at least
za'u	more than… (by default more than one).
du'e	too many

Some examples:

so'i lo merko cu nelci la .nirvanas.
Many Americans like "Nirvana".

The group, not the mystical state. Although on second thought… An yes, names are ambiguous, because they're used Humpty-Dumpty style: they mean what the speaker means.

so'u lo jungo cu nelci la .nirvanas.
Few Chinese people like Nirvana.

su'e mu lo muno prenu cu cmila
No more than five out of the fifty people laugh(ed).
(For example, if a comedian told a bad joke).

su'o pa lo prenu cu prami do
At least one person loves you.

This last sentence is logically the same as lo prenu cu prami do, which means at least one person loves you. In fact, all articles in Lojban have such default numbers associated with them; lo by default means su'o pa lo ro - at least one out of all….

First, second, last

Ordinal numbers such as "first, second, third" are used to put things in order. In Lojban they are formed with a number plus moi immediately after it:

pamoi = x₁ is first among ...

remoi = x₁ is second among ...

cimoi = x₁ is third among ...

…

romoi = x₁ is last among ...

It is possible to use verbs instead of numbers:

memimoi = x₁ is mine

medomoi = x₁ is yours

In this case we had to convert pronouns to verbs using me.

ti pamoi lo ratcu pe mi'
This is my first rat.

ta romoi lo ratcu pe mi
That is my last rat.

lo cerni tarci cu romoi lo tarci poi cumki falo nu viska pu lo nu co'a donri
The morning star is the last star that's visible before the dawning of the day.

ta me mi moi
That's mine.

ta me mi moi lo stixu
That's my place.

.i lo vi stizu cu me mi moi lo paci stizu poi sruri lo jubme
This place is mine among 13 places around the table.

Cardinal numbers are placed before ordinal numbers in a string and separated by lo.

ci lo pa moi be lo ckafi kabri
the first three cups of coffee

Without lo we could have read this as ci pa moi – thirty-first.

Never, once, twice, always

An intermittent event can be specified with the prepositions like ta'e or by counting the number of times during the interval that it takes place. In this case we use a number and append a preposition roi to make a quantified tense. Quantified tenses are common in English, but not so commonly named: they are exemplified by the following constructs:

• noroi = never
• paroi = once
• reroi = twice
• ciroi = thrice

...

• so'iroi = many times
• so'uroi = a few times
• du'eroi = too many times
• roroi = always

mi paroi klama lo zarci
I go to the market once.

zarci = x₁ is a market

mi du'eroi klama lo zarci
I go to the market too often.

With the quantified tense alone, we don't know whether the past, the present, or the future is intended, but of course the quantified tense can be enriched with tenses:

mi pu reroi klama lo zarci
I went to the market twice.

Without pu the construct reroi may mean that once i went to the market but the second time I will be there only in the future.

Making prepositions from verbs. fi'o

Sometimes the place structures are insufficient to meet the needs of actual speech. For example,

I go with you.

The verb klama - to go has no place for denoting with whom you are going. Lojban allows you to solve the problem by adding a new place, extending the relationship:

mi klama fi'o kansa do
I go with you accompanying me.

I go with you.

kansa = to accompany

The verb klama has now acquired an additional place specifying who accompanies you while you are going.

The combination of the particle fi'o followed by a verb relation, in this case the verb word kansa, forms a new case which is prefixed to the noun filling this new place, namely do. The meaning of fi'o kansa do is that do fills the x1 place of kansa, whose place structure is

kansa = x₁ accompanies x₂

It is important to remember that even though do is placed following fi'o kansa, it belongs in the x1 place of kansa.

What's really interesting is that prepositions in Lojban have their corresponding verbs.

For example, fa'a = fi'o farna.

farna = x₁ is a direction of x₂ from viewpoint x₃

So if you forgot a preposition you can use fi'o plus an appropriate verb instead of that.

As you can see in English we use a preposition. fi'o kansa is also a preposition but with a verb inside!

In fact there is a preposition for fi'o kansa as well. It's ka'ai. But if you don't remember a preposition you can safely use the construct with fi'o.

We can add verbs with se and its friends for fi'o:

mi klama fi'o se pilno lo jamfu
I walk using feet.
I walk on foot.

There is a common preposition se pi'o which is the same as fi'o se pilno. So if there is se inside fi'o phrase the corresponding preposition also has this se (Of course, the same for te, ve, xe).

The only exlusion is for pu and ba:

pu = fi'o se purci
ba = fi'o se balvi

So those two prepositions have se in their coresponding verbs whereas they themselves don't have.

The term for such an added place is a preposition place, as distinguished from the regular numbered places. The fi'o construction marking a prepositional place is called a prepositional phrase, and the noun which follows it a prepositional noun. Prepositional phrases may be placed anywhere within the main phrase, in any order; they have no effect whatever on the rules for assigning unmarked phrase to numbered places, and they may not be marked with places tags (fa, fe, fi, fo, fu).

do bajra du'i lo nu lo mlatu cu bajra

You run like a cat.

You run equally to the cat running

du'i - preposition. "equally to …" (comparing event to event)

As an event follows du'i in this example du'i is applied to the whole event of the verb phrase.

There can be prepositions that refer to objects. An example is fa'a. It is compared to the first noun of the phrase where it resides.

Time of day, dates and calendar

Time of day

Template:TalkquoteRed or another option

ma - the content question word (what)

tcika = x₁ (hours, minutes, seconds) is the time of state/event x₂ on day/date x₃, at location x₄, by calendar x₅

So in Lojban, times do not exist in the abstract: times are always the times of something. So we ask what the time is of ti, meaning this event/thing, or, in other words now.

A typical dialogue would be:

- ma tcika ti = What's the time?
- li pa pa = Eleven

If we want to be a bit more precise, we need to use pi'e. This introduces fractional parts of numbers like pi, but unlike pi it doesn't need to indicate decimal fractions in a number. In fact, the kind of fractional part it does indicate can vary within the same number. In normal counting, pi is a decimal point, in hexadecimal it's a hexadecimal point and so on, but the kind of fraction it indicates never changes its value. But pi'e doesn't have that restriction; so we can use it to separate hours from minutes (which are sixtieths of hours), or, as we will see below, days from hours (which are twenty-fourths of days). pi'e, in other words, means part, not decimal point. So an alternative answer to the question could be

li pa pa pi'e mu
11:05 (Five past eleven)
(The number eleven, and five parts)

or if you want to be particularly precise,

li pa pa pi'e mu pi'e pa bi
Five minutes and eighteen seconds past eleven.
(The number eleven, and five parts, and eighteen parts of parts)

Let's imagine, though, that the time is not five past eleven, but five to eleven. We can say li pa no pi'e mu mu (10:55), but we can also say li pa pa pi'e ni'u mu, where ni'u is the Lojban minus sign (for negative numbers, not for subtraction) — what we are saying is 11:−5.

For half past eleven you can also use pi and say li pa pa pimu 11.5. I don't particularly like this method, but it is perfectly good Lojban. If we are using numbers for times, it is normal to use the 24-hour system, so 6 PM is li pa bi (18:00).

24-hour time is used almost always in Lojban as 12-hour system can lead to confusion.

If we want to give the time of an event, rather than just tell the time, we need to fill in some more places. The second place of tcika is state/event: people don't have times — events have times. So we use nu:

li pa no cu tcika lo nu mi klama

Ten o'clock is the time that I go (or come!)

Preposition for time of day

By using se we can get a more naturally sounding sentence:

lo nu mi klama cu se tcika li pa no
I go at 10 o'clock.

But you might still find too long and clumsy.

Well, here is the full definition of klama:

klama = x₁ comes/goes to destination x₂ from origin x₃ via route x₄ using means/vehicle x₅

So

lo klama = a goer

lo se klama = a destionation gone to

lo te klama = an origin, starting point gone from

lo ve klama = a route

lo xe klama = a vehicle

It would be nice if klama had a place for the time of going/coming, but it doesn't. (And after all, you wouldn't be happy to learn a six-place verb!) So we should use a preposition:

mi klama ti'u li pa no
I am going at 10:00.

ti'u = fi'o tcika = occurring at the time of day…

klama now expresses a relationship between six things: a goer, a destination, a source, a route, a vehicle, and a time at which this all takes place.

Dates

nanca = x₁ is of duration of x₂ years

So nanca specifies the duration and in order two say two years long you fill the second place with a number prefixed with li:

mi nanca li re re
I am 22 years old.

In order to say in year 2014 we use moi:

ca lo re no pa vo moi nanca mi pu zvati la .kebek.
During 2014th year I was in Quebec.
In 2014 I was in Quebec.

The basic verb for dates is

datru = x₁ (event) is dated/pertaining to day/occurring on day x₂ of month x₃ of year x₄ in calendar x₅

The default calendar is the standard Western one as it is international. If you want to use, for example, the Arabic or Chinese calendars, you can put lo xrabo or lo jungo in the fourth place. (As always, context is important — in a discussion of Islamic history we would probably assume that the Arabic calendar was being used).

We can therefore say

lo nu lo remna cu klama lo lunra cu datru li repa li ze li pa so xa so
The-event a human goes (to) the moon is dated on day 21, month 7, year 1969.

Remember that when we speak of dates in Lojban, we also need to specify the place on the globe where the date was calculated. The instant Neil Armstrong made that small step for (a) man, for instance, it wasn't the 21st of July everywhere on Earth. In Tokyo, it was closer to the 22nd. So if we want to point out that it was the 21st, Houston time, we need to specify the x4 place of tcika. That means we can simply say:

lonu lo remna cu klama lo lunra cu datru li re pa li ze li pa so xa so fi'o se tcika fo la .xustyn.

Days, months and seasons

masti = x₁ is x₂ months long

djedi = x₁ is x₂ full days long

Here are the names of the days of the week:

• lo pavdei - Monday (1st day)
• lo reldei - Tuesday (2nd day)
• lo cibdei - Wednesday (3rd day)
• lo vondei - Thursday (4th day)
• lo mumdei - Friday (5th day)
• lo xavdei - Saturday (6th day)
• lo zeldei - Sunday (7th day)

mi gunka ca lo pavdei
I work on Monday

mi gunka ca ro pavdei
I work on Mondays, I work every Monday

And here are the names of months:

• pavma'i = January (1st month)
• relma'i = February (2nd month)
• cibma'i = March (3rd month)
• vonma'i = April (4th month)
• mumyma'i = May (5th month)
• xavma'i = June (6th month)
• zelma'i = July (7th month)
• bivma'i = August (8th month)
• sozma'i = September (9th month)
• pavnonma'i = October (10th month)
• pavypavma'i = November (11th month)
• pavrelma'i = December (12th month)

It is easier to remember them if you notice that they the first letters remind of numbers. Thus, Monday is the first day and start with pa (1) and so on.

The words for standard 4 seasons are:

lo vensa	spring
lo crisa	summer
lo critu	autumn
lo dunra	winter

Calendars in other cultures

The names of days of the week and months match international standards. However, there can be a need to describe conventions for cultures which for example do not use a seven-day week. In ordinary speech you are free to create compound verbs for that. For example, you can call the first month of classical Chinese calendar as lo jungo pavma'i (literally Chinese January although the first month in the original Chinese calendar rather starts in February). And lo jungo pavdei could be the first day of the Chinese ten-day week. (jungo means x1 is Chinese).

The same logic can be applied if the seasons where you live don't match this pattern. For example, the rainy season or monsoon could be lo carvi citsi (from carvi = rain, and citsi = season). Here are some I made up for fun to give a better idea of the weather in Britain:

lo lenku carvi citsi	the cold rain - spring
lo mligla carvi citsi	the warm rain - summer
lo brife carvi citsi	the windy rain - autumn
lo dunja carvi citsi	the freezing rain - winter

Later in this course we'll see how to create new words in the form of lujvo and zi'evla and those words will have precise meanings and thus become terms. You'll actually need a pretty good knowledge of Lojban to make up lujvo on the spot, but we'll learn how to make some simple lujvo later on in this course.

Time and place in Lojban

As we've seen all tenses in Lojban are optional, which is nice of course since you don't have to think all the time what tense to use when the context is clear anyway. Saying mi citka lo cirla can mean I eat cheese or I ate cheese or I always eat cheese or In a moment, i will have just finished eating cheese. Context resolves what is correct, and in most conversation, tenses are not needed at all. However, when it's needed it's needed, and it must be taught. Furthermore, Lojban tenses are unusual because they treat time and space fundamentally the same - saying that I worked a long time ago is not grammatically different than saying I work far away to the north. In many languages, tense system is perhaps the most difficult part of the language. Luckily, Lojbanic tense system is perfectly regular and therefore requires less time to understand.

Once again, tense particle works as a preposition when noun is placed immediately after it:

mi pinxe ba
I will drink.

mi pinxe ba lo nu mi cadzu
I drink after I walk.

So without a noun after them ba and other prepositions work relative to the here-and-now. In: I gave a computer away, we can assume that the action happened relative to now, and thus we can elide the noun of the preposition, because it's obvious: pu nu mi dunda lo skami or mi dunda lo skami pu or, more commonly mi pu dunda lo skami. If speaking about some events that happened some other time than the present, it is sometimes assumed that all tenses are relative to that event which is being spoken about.

The sentence

mi pu klama lo merko gugde
I went to America.

gugde = x₁ is the country of people x₂ with land/territory x₃

does not imply that I'm not still traveling to USA, only that it was also true some time in the past, for instance five minutes ago.

Time journeys

In the first lesson we decided that we can freely move prepositional phrases (related to directions) around the sentence

• being careful about not to placing them inside any phrase embedded into the phrase we are in, and
• putting je before the second, third etc. prepositions so that all prepositions are equal.

However, if there are several prepositions in one phrase without je, the rule is that you read them from left to right, thinking it as a so called imaginary journey. You begin at an implied point in time and space (default: the speaker's "now and here"), and then follow the prepositions one at a time from left to right. Example:

mi pu ba klama lo cmana
At some time in the past, I will be about to go to a mountain.

mi ba pu klama lo cmana
At some point in the future, I will have gone to a mountain.

Since we do not specify the amount of time we move back or forth, the understanding could in both cases happen in the future or the past of the point of reference.

Suppose we want to specify that the a man hit a dog just a minute ago. The words zi, za and zu specifies a short, unspecified (presumably medium) and long distance in time. Notice the vowel order i, a and u. This order appears again and again in Lojban, and might be worth to memorize. Short and long in are always context dependent, relative and subjective. Two hundred years is a short time for a species to evolve, but a long time to wait for the bus.

fau = preposition. at the same time/place/situation as …
ca = preposition. is at the same time as/during …; present tense.	bu'u = preposition. coincident with/at the same place as…
zi = preposition. Denotes occurring short before the point of reference	vi = preposition. near …. Occurring the small distance in space from point of reference
za = preposition. Denotes occurring not specified amount of time before the point of reference	va = preposition. not far from …. Occurring the unspecified distance in space from point of reference
zu = preposition. Denotes occurring long ago from the point of reference	vu = preposition. far away from …. Occurring the far distance in space from the point of reference

As you can see spatial distance is marked in a similar way by vi, va and vu for short, unspecified (medium) and long distance in space.

The space equivalent of ca is bu'u. And fau is more vague than two of them, it can mean time, space or situation.

• zi, za or zu are usually used with pu or ba in front of them. This is because most people always need to specify past or future in their native languages:
  • pu zu means a long time ago
  • pu za means a while ago
  • pu zi means just
  • ba zi means soon
  • ba za means in a while
  • ba zu means in a long time

But when you think about it Lojbanically, most of the time the time-direction is obvious, and pu or ba are superfluous!

• The order in which direction-prepositions and distance-prepositions are said makes a difference. Remember that the meanings of several tense words placed together are pictured by an imaginary journey reading from left to right. Thus pu zu is a long time ago while zu pu is in the past of some point in time which is a long time toward the future or the past of now. In the first example, pu shows that we begin in the past, zu then that it is a long time backwards. In the second example, zu shows that we begin at some point far away in time from now, pu then, that we move backwards from that point. Thus pu zu is always in the past. zu pu could be in the future. The fact that these time tenses combine in this way is one of the differences between tense prepositions and other prepositions. The meanings of other prepositions are not altered by the presence of additional prepositions in a phrase.
• If spatial and temporal tenses are mixed, the rule is to always put temporal before spacial. If this rule is violated, it can sometimes result in syntactical ambiguity, which Lojban does not tolerate.

ba za nu mi vu gunka
Some time in the future, I will work a place long away.

gunka = to work.

Scope

The rule of imaginary journey allows us to express subtle but important differences in meaning.

Compare vi nu ro da fenki versus ro da vi fenki.

ro da vi fenki
Everyone is crazy here.
Every one here crazy (literally)

vi nu ro da fenki
Here everyone is crazy.
Here: every one crazy (literally)

Did you catch that? Everyone is crazy here means that if someone is not crazy somewhere then they will become crazy in this place.

Here everyone is crazy simply describes those who are here (and they are crazy). We don't know anything about others in other places.

Prepositions spanning over time and space

All these constructs basically treat phrases without specifying their length. In actuality, most events play out over a span of time and space. In the following few paragraphs, we will learn how to specify intervals of time and space when we want to express that:

ze'i - preposition: spanning over the short time of … (event)	ve'i - preposition: spanning over the short space of … (event)
ze'a - preposition: spanning over the unspecified or medium time of … (event)	ve'a - preposition: spanning over the unspecified or medium space of … (event)
ze'u - preposition: spanning over the long time of … (event)	ve'u - preposition: spanning over the long space of … (event)

Again it's easy to remember given the similarity between vowels in two columns.

Translate: .oi dai do ve'u klama lo dotco gugde ze'u

where

.oi - interjection: pain

dai - shows listener's attitude

Answer: Ouch, you spend a long time traveling a long space to Germany.

Though most people are not familiar with spacial tenses, these new words can open up for some pretty sweet uses. One could, for instance, translate That's a big dog as ti ve'u gerku. Saying: This thing dogs for a long space makes you sound retarded in English, but well-spoken in Lojban!

ze'u and it's friends also combine with other tenses to form compound tenses. The rule for ze'u and the others are that any tenses preceding it marks an endpoint of the process (relative to the point of reference) and any tenses coming after it marks the other endpoint relative to the first. This should be demonstrated with a couple of examples:

.o'ocu'i do citka pu ze'u ba zu
{tolerance} you eat beginning in the past and for a long time ending at some point far into the future of when you started
Hmpf, you ate for a long time.

We can also contrast do ca ze'i pu klama with do pu ze'i ca klama. The first event of traveling has one endpoint in the present and extends a little towards the past, while the second event has one endpoint in the past and extends only to the present (that is, slighty into the past or future) of that endpoint.

jmive
x1 is alive by standard x2

What does .ui mi pu zi ze'u jmive mean?

Answer:

(I'm happy) I live from a little into the past and a long way towards the future or past (obviously the future, in this case) of that event.

I am young, and have most of my life ahead of me :-).

Just to underline the similarity with spacial tenses, let's have another example, this time with spacial tenses:

.u'e za'a bu'u ve'u ca'u zdani

(Wonder) (I observe) Extending a long space from here to my front is a home.

Wow, this home extending ahead is huge!

.u'e - interjection: wonder

To the left, to the right…

As mentioned, spacial and temporal time tenses are very much alike. Contrast the previous three time tenses with these four spacial tenses:

zu'a - preposition: to the left of (a noun follows)

ca'u - preposition: in front of (a noun follows)

ri'u - preposition: right of (a noun follows)

The noun which fills the preposition has an implied zo'e (something or someone), which is almost always understood as relative to the speaker's time and place (this is especially important when speaking about left and right).

What would .o'onai ri'u nu lo prenu cu darxi lo gerku pu mean?

o'o: interjection: patience. The full scale is o'o (patience), - o'ocu'i (tolerance), o'onai (anger)

darxi = x₁ beats/hits x₂ with instrument x₃ at locus x₄

Answer: {anger!} To the right (of something, probably me) and in the past (of some event), something is an event of a person beating a dog. or A man hit a dog to my right!

Event contours

In the first lesson we looked at how to express simple, continuous and perfect tense.

They express event contours and unlike pu, ca and ba with event contours we view each event as having shape with certain stages: A time before it unfolds, a time when it begins, a time when it is in process, a time when it ends, and a time after it has ended. Event contours then tells us which part of the event's process was happening during the time specified by the other tenses. We know a couple of them:

pu'o - preposition. Event contour: the event has not yet happened during (a noun follows)

ca'o - preposition. Event contour: the event is in process during (a noun follows)

ba'o - preposition. Event contour: the event has ended during (a noun follows)

pu'o needs to be demonstrated by an example. What does .ui mi pu'o se zdani mean?

Answer: Yay, I'll begin to have a home.

mi ba'o tavla lo mikce
I have spoken to the doctor (or had spoken, or will have spoken).

mi ca'o tavla lo mikce
I am speaking to the doctor (or was speaking, or will be speaking).

mi pu'o tavla lo mikce
I am about to speak to the doctor (or was about to speak, or will be about to speak).

mi pu pu'o tavla lo mikce
I was about to speak to the doctor.

mi ba ba'o tavla lo mikce
I will have spoken to the doctor.

mi pu ba'o tavla lo mikce
I had spoken to the doctor.

mi pu ca'o tavla lo mikce
I was speaking to the doctor.

Template:Talkquote

Often, event contours are more precise that other kind of tenses. Even more clarity is achieved by combining several tenses: .a'o mi ba zi ba'o gunka = I hope I've soon finished working.

In Lojban, we also operate with an event's natural beginning and its natural end. The term natural is highly subjective in this sense, and the natural end refers to the point in the process where it should end. You can say about a late train, for instance, that its process of reaching you is now extending beyond its natural end. An undercooked, but served meal, similarly, is being eaten before that process' natural beginning. The event contours used in these examples are as follows:

za'o - preposition. Event contour: the event is in process beyond its natural end during (a noun follows)

xa'o - preposition. Event contour: the event is immaturely in process during (a noun follows)

cidja - x1 is food, which is edible for x2

Translate: .oi do citka za'o lo nu do ba'o u'e citka zo'e noi cidja do

Answer: Oy, you keep eating when you have finished, incredibly, eating something edible!

All of these tenses have been describing stages of a process which takes some time (as shown on the graph above; those tenses above the event like). But many of the event contours describes point like stages in the process, like its beginning. As is true of ca and bu'u, they actually extend slightly into the past and future of that point, and need not to be precise.

The two most important point-like event contours are:

co'a - preposition. Event contour: the event starts during (a noun follows)

co'u - preposition. Event contour: the event stops during (a noun follows)

For this kind of aspect, English normally just uses verbs: start, finish, stop. Lojban likewise allows you to use distinct verbs to express these notions: cfari, mulno, and sisti. Using aspects just lets you express things more succinctly; and with Lojban the way it is, anything that makes things more succinct comes in handy.

Furthermore, there is a point where the process is naturally complete, but not necessarily has ended yet:

mo'u - preposition. Event contour: the event is at its natural ending during (a noun follows)

Most of the time, though, processes actually end at their natural ending; this is what makes it natural. Trains are not usually late, and people usually retrain themselves to eat only edible food.

Since a process can be interrupted and resumed, these points have earned their own event contour also:

de'a - preposition. Event contour: the event is pausing during (a noun follows)

di'a - preposition. Event contour: the event is resuming during (a noun follows)

Event as a whole in Chinese and Russian

In Chinese and Russian you can easily distinguish between an event still going on (imperfective), and a verb indicating that an event is viewed as a whole (perfective).

When in English we say I have spoken to the doctor, we are also indicating that we have now finished doing so — we are after the end of the event. When we say I am speaking to the doctor, on the other hand, we are also indicating that we are in middle of the event: the event is continuing, and is not yet over.

Chinese uses the particle 了 （le） to express this perfectivity.

To explicitly express perfectivity in Lojban we use the preposition co'i, which treats an entire event, from the beginning to the end as one single point:

mi pu zi co'i penmi lo dotco prenu
I have recently met a German person.

A little while ago, I was at the point in time where i met a German person.

penmi = x₁ meets x₂ at location x₃

All event contours in one diagram

Violet line signifies the time for the natural beginning and natural end of an event.

Lesson 6. Connections

If … then

fau lo nu do fenki vau mi ba prami do
If you are crazy then I'll love you.

The preposition fau means with the event of…, under circumstances … It requires an event after it. In fact it is much like ca (when) or bu'u (at).

Indeed, in most cases we can replace fau with ca getting almost the same meaning (may be sometimes more precise):

mi ba prami do ca lo nu do fenki
I'll love you when you are crazy.

We can replace lo with ro after such prepositions getting a new meaning:

mi ba prami do ca ro nu do fenki
I'll love you whenever you are crazy.

Connecting sentences

Connecting sentences with prepositions

If two sentences are too long we can i to separate them. But we still can show that they express the same idea using prepositions:

mi klama lo cmana .i ca bo lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
I am coming to a mountain, and the same time a cat is drinking milk.

which is the same as

mi klama lo cmana ca lo nu lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru
I am coming to a mountain while a cat is drinking milk.

So here we use .i, then the preposition that we need and then bo.

There's a new particle here, bo. Why? Left on its own, a preposition always applies to the noun after it. So .i ca lo mlatu would have meant something like during a cat, at the time of cat. Looks like a nonsense. At least this doesn't mean what we want. To make the prepositions apply to the entire sentence and bind the previous sentence, we follow it with the word bo.

Usually we split sentences into two and then bind them with bo when a sentence looks or sounds too bulky. Template:Talkquote

It's possible to do the same with fa, fe and it's friends.

mi gleki .i fe bo do jinga

is the same as

mi gleki lo nu do jinga
I am glad that you win.

Here fe refers to the second place of gleki. It is possible to use se to reverse the order:

do jinga .i se fe bo mi gleki
You win, and I am glad of that.

Conjunctions

We've seen conjunctions je, ja, jo nai and ju already.

They work the same way as connectives but don't require bo.

.i je joins two sentences with a logical "and", showing that two sentences are part of one thought and that both sentences are true.

do mutce melbi .i je mi prami do
You are very beautiful, and I love you.

We can put other conjunctions after .i of course.

Sometimes you might want to use several verb relations in one sentence. E.g. {{pu nu mi kelci lo fudbolo je cu klama lo zdani je cu pinxe lo ladru
I played football, went home, drank milk.}} In such case we put the required conjunction and add cu after it.

But …

Consider a sentence:

You have nice hands but ugly voice.

Actually but is the same as and although it gives us a flavor of contrast.

lo xance be do cu melbi .i je ku'i lo voksa be do cu mabla
Your hands are nice. But your voice is ugly.

It's all the matter of contrast when using but instead of and.

In Lojban we just use je and then add the interjection ku'i that will give us the necessary contrast.

xance = hand (of someone)

voksa = voice (of someone)

Negation in conjunctions

mi nelci la bob je nai la alis
I like Bob and not Alice
I like Bob but not Alice.

This is how we can say but not. Thus we negate the noun after je. We can even say je nai ku'i adding a flavor of contrast for the second noun.

It is possible to do the reverse: to negate the noun before je. In this case we use the particle na before je:

mi nelci la alis na je la Bob
I like Alice not and Bob
I don't like Alice but I do like Bob.

The second sentence means the same as the first although it may sound a bit weird for English speakers ("I like Alice not…") so you might prefer the first version - mi nelci la bob je nai la alis or even mi nelci la bob .i mi nelci nai la alis. And the last case:

mi nelci la alis na je nai la Bob
I don't like neither Alice nor Bob

na je nai = Neither, not the first and not the second one.

Choice questions

There is another type of or that we find in questions.

- pei do pinxe lo tcati jo nai lo ckafi? - Will you drink tea or coffee?
- je'u - Yes.

That's a weird but a perfectly reasonable answer: Yes, I will drink tea or coffee.

But if you want your listener to make a choice use the question conjunction ji:

- do pinxe lo tcati ji lo ckafi?
- Will you drink tea or coffee?

The answer can be:

je - Both (the first and the second item is chosen)

je nai - The first one (tea) (the first but not the second one is chosen)
na je - The second one (coffee) (not the first but the second one is chosen)

na je nai - Neither (not the first and not the second one is chosen)

Causes. Verbs and prepositions

Most children go through a phase where every second sentence seems to start with why? For example:

• Why is it raining?
• Why did Sally hit me?
• Why does Sally always get a star from the teacher?

To these, the frustrated parent may give a series of answers with because:

• Because the clouds are crying.
• Because you pulled her hair.
• Because she works hard.

As we saw earlier why is se ja'e. This preposition is derived from the verb

jalge = event x₁ is the result or outcome of event x₂

So here are the short translations:

• se ja'e ma carvi = Why is it raining?
• se ja'e ma la salis pu darxi mi = Why did Sally hit me?
• se ja'e ma la salis cu te dunda lo tartcita lo ctuca = Why does Sally always get a star from the teacher?

with the answers:

• lo nu lo dilnu cu klaku = Because the clouds are crying.
• lo nu do pu lacpu lo kerfa be ra = Because you pulled her hair.
• lo nu ra carmi gunka = Because she works hard.

Therefore

Therefore is the reverse word compared to because. So if se ja'e means because then ja'e means therefore.

lo dilnu cu klaku ja'e lo nu lo dargu cu cilmo
Skies are crying resulting in the road being wet.

We can connect two sentences just like we did with connective je and it's friends:

lo dilnu cu klaku i ja'e bo lo dargu cu cilmo
Skies are crying. Therefore the road is wet.

bo is necessary here because without it .i ja'e lo dargu would have meant something like because of the road. Looks like a nonsense. At least this doesn't mean what we want. To make the prepositions apply to the entire sentence and bind the previous sentence, we follow it with the word bo.

nibli - logical implication

There can be another kind of why:

Why did Fluffy have to die?

Because Fluffy is a rabbit, and rabbits don't live very long.

Here we can't use jalge. Here is not result but logical implication. The fact that Fluffy is a rabbit logically implies that he will not live long, given what we know about rabbits.

ni'i ma la flufis co'a morsi
Why did Fluffy have to die?

lo nu la flufis cu ractu .i je lo ractu cu ze'i jmive
Because Fluffy is a rabbit, and rabbits don't live very long.

ze'i = for a small period of time

So here we use the verb nibli:

nibli = x₁ logically necessitates/entails/implies x₂ under rules x₃

or it's preposition:

ni'i = logically because …

The sentence

lo nu la .flufis. cu ractu cu nibli lo nu fy. co'a morsi
the-event Fluffy is-a-rabbit implies the-event he dies

actually misses out a step that rabbits are short-lived but it will do for practical purposes. If you want a textbook logic example, you can say

la .flufis. cu ractu .i je ro ractu ze'i jmive .i se ni'i bo la .flufis. ze'i jmive
Fluffy is a rabbit and all rabbits are not long-lived.

Fluffy is therefore not long-lived.

But what is the preposition for ‘therefore’? How do we say the reverse — Rabbits don't live long; therefore Fluffy died — in a single sentence? As it turns out, we say it like this:

ro ractu ze'i jmive se ni'i lo nu la .flufis. co'a morsi
Rabbits don't live long, with the logical consequence that Fluffy died.

We have here a preposition, se ni'i, which means with the logical consequence that, i.e. therefore. And this se ni'i looks a lot like ni'i, the preposition meaning logically because.

So we have a pair:

ni'i = logically because, and

se ni'i = the logically necessitated, logically therefore.

gasnu - to make something do something

Let's take an example

lo canko cu kalri = The window is open.

Now we want to know how to say

Open the window!

Such verbs as to open (something), to move can be rephrased as to make something open, to make something move and therefore we don't need to learn extra verbs for every such meaning. Instead we use an additional verb all the time:

gasnu = agent x₁ causes event x₂ to happen

For example:

ko gasnu lo nu lo canko cu kalri
Open the window!

There is a preposition for gasnu which is gau so you can say more concisely:

gau ko lo canko cu kalri
Open the window!

or

e'o gau do lo canko cu kalri
Please open the window.

But there is the third option, to use separate words.

mi kargau lo canko
I open a window.

kargau = to open (something)

Verbs more precise than jalge

jalge = event x₁ is the result or outcome of event x₂

se ja'e = as the result of …

Here are other frequent verbs for causes with their corresponding prepositions:

rinka = x₁ causes effect x₂ under conditions x₃

ri'a = because (of physical cause…)

krinu = event x₁ is a justification or reason for event x₂

ki'u = because (due to explanation …)

mukti = x₁ is a motive for the event x₂ caused by agent x₃

mu'i = because (of motive …)

Notice that se ja'e is the only verb that has se. It means that the order of it's places is reversed compared to the other verbs.

Let's try to replace jalge with other verbs in our examples.

rinka - physical causation

In Why does it rain?, the child is asking for a physical explanation, and this is what he gets. If we express the rather unlikely explanation in Lojban, we get

lo nu lo dilnu cu klaku cu rinka lo nu lo dargu cu cilmo
The-event the cloud weep physically-cause the event rain.
The clouds' crying is making it rain.

rinka means to cause in a physical or mechanical sense.

To change this "to cause" to a "because", we can use ri'a:

lo dargu cu cilmo ri'a lo nu lo dilnu cu klaku

which is might be more elegant.

(We moved ri'a with it's noun to the end which changed no meaning.)

The reason I have emphasised that rinka and ri'a only deal with physical causes is that it cannot apply in many cases where an English-speaker would use because. Consider the second example. If we say

la .salis. cu darxi do ri'a lo nu do lacpu lo kerfa
Sally hits you with-physical-cause you pull the hair

this is nonsense, since it means that little Joey pulling Sally's hair physically caused her to hit him, which would only be true if Joey had pulled her hair so hard that she had fallen on top of him, perhaps.

In this case either we use a more vague se ja'e or another preposition that we'll study just now.

mukti - motivation

In the hair-pulling case, what we have is not two events which are physically connected, like clouds and rain, but three events:

1. Joey pulls Sally's hair.
2. Sally decides, as a result of this, to hit Joey.
3. Sally hits Joey.

For the sake of convenience, English misses out the second event and says Sally hit Joey because he pulled her hair. However, this is not only vague but, some would say, psychologically dangerous. People do not generally react to stimuli automatically, but as a result of motivation, and confusing complex responses with simple physical causation may lead us to believe that we have no control over our emotions or even our actions. Whether or not we believe in free will at a metaphysical level, it is useful to distinguish between physical reactions and responses which have a cognitive/emotional element. Not surprisingly, then, Lojban has a separate verb for motivation: mukti. The full definition of mukti is

x1 (action/event/state) motivates/is a motive/incentive for action/event x2, per volition of x3

We can therefore say

lo nu do lacpu lo kerfa be ra cu mukti lo nu la .salis. cu darxi do [vau la .salis]
the-event you pull the hair [related-to Sally] motivates the-event Sally hit you [through the volition of Sally]
You pulling Sally's hair motivated her to hit you.

As we can see, the third place is nearly always unnecessary, since we can assume that the agent of the second event is also the person who decides to do it. Even so, this structure is a bit clumsy, so again we would normally use a preposition — in this case, mu'i. This gives us

la salis. cu darxi do mu'i lo nu do lacpu lo kerfa
Sally hits you with-motive you pull the hair.

Using te we get te mukti which has another concise translation in English:

te mukti = x₁ intends/going to do x₂ with motive x₃

Yes, in fact to be going to is tightly connected with motivation so we use the same verb for these concepts in Lojban.

mi te mukti lo ka klama la paris
I am going to visit Paris.

krinu - justification

The difference between motivation and justification is not always clear, but we can say that the latter involves some rule or standard while the former does not require this. Going back to the example of Sally and the teacher, it is possible to say

la .salis. cu te dunda lo tartcita lo ctuca mu'i lo nu sy. carmi gunka
Sally is-given a star-label [by] the teacher with-motivation she much-try work.

However, this says only that Sally's hard work motivated the teacher to give her a star. It does not imply that it is the custom for teachers to give stars (or ‘star-labels’, as I have rather pedantically translated it) as a reward for good work. What we need here is ki'u, the preposition from krinu:

x1 (event/state) is a reason/justification/explanation for/causing/permitting x2 (event/state)

We can therefore more accurately say

lo nu la .salis. cu carmi gunka cu krinu lo nu lo ctuca cu dunda lo tartcita sy.

or, as in the earlier example,

la .salis. cu te dunda lo tartcita lo ctuca ki'u lo nu sy. carmi gunka

Let's not confuse jalge and nibli

ki'u appeals to more general considerations than mu'i, but it still deals with human standards, not logical laws. Only a very naive student would believe that if a student is given a star, it must logically imply that that student has worked hard. In the tragic case of Fluffy, however, the fact that Fluffy is a rabbit logically implies that he will not live long, given what we know about rabbits. Here we can confidently use nibli.

Of course, the questions do not have to take these forms; if young Joey is a religious type, he might say la .flufis. co'a morsi ki'u ma, asking with what justification God took his rabbit from him, whereas if he is scientifically minded, he might ask la .flufis. co'a morsi ri'a ma, inquiring as to the physical cause of Fluffy's death.

Resume

We can now make several types of why, by using a preposition and a ma after it. Our child's questions from the beginning of the lesson translate as follows:

• .i lo dargu cu cilmo ri'a ma
• .i la .salis. cu darxi mi mu'i ma
• .i la .salis. cu te dunda lo tartcita lo ctuca ki'u ma

These three could be transalted using se ja'e ma instead, of course.

• .i la .flufis. co'a morsi ni'i ma

To an English-speaker, this looks back-to-front (The road is wet. Why?) but there is really no reason why question-words have to come at the beginning of a sentence:

• .i ri'a ma lo dargu cu cilmo

etc.

So … that

The expression so … that is very common in English. It is expressed in Lojban by splitting such sentence into to:

mi tai galtu plipe .i ja'e bo mi farlu
I jumped so high that I fell down.

tai - preposition. in the manner of …

mi tai zukte
I cat this way

mi tai fengu
I am so angry.

fengu = x₁ is angry of x₂ (event)

fau and da'i. What if …

da'i mi turni = I could be a king.

da'inai mi turni = I am a king.

The second sentence is a so called subjunctive (imaginary) claim.

• The interjection da'i marks the verb phrase in which it is put as describing an imaginary event.
• The opposite interjection da'inai marks the verb phrase as describing an actual, real event.

Constructs with da'i are usually translated to English with so called auxiliary verbs such as can/could, will/would, may/might, should and must. Clauses with da'i in English are said to be in subjunctive mood.

Omitting da'i or da'inai makes the sentence clear only from context which is usually quite transparent. That's why da'i or da'inai is not obligatory. We use it for clarity when needed.

Phrases with da'i often include fau:

da'i mi gleki fau lo nu mi ponse lo megdo rupnu
I would/could be happy if I had one million dollars.

fau = in the event/situation/world of …

megdo = x₁ is a million of x₂

Here the event inside fau is equally imagined together with mi gleki. And here is the reverse example:

da'inai mi gleki fau lo nu mi ponse lo megdo rupnu
Having one million dollars I am happy.

A good example of mo and da'i:

mo da'i fau lo nu mi cusku zo nai
What if I say "no"?

Probabilities

Suppose you come home and hear someone scratching. You can say one of the following sentences:

fau da ti mlatu.
This might be/possibly is a cat. It is possible that this is a cat.
(You keep several animals at home. So it might be your cat scratching but you are not sure.)

fau ro da ti mlatu.
this must be/certainly is the cat.
(You have a cat and such noise can be produced by only one object, that cat.)

fau so'e da ti mlatu.
This should be/probably is the cat.
(If you have a dog then it can also produce such sounds but your dog usually doesn't do that so the cat is more likely.)

fau so'u da ti mlatu.
It is not probable that this is the cat.

fau no da ti mlatu
This can't be the cat. This mustn't be the cat. It is impossible that this is the cat.

Notice that we omitted da'i for brevity. But if we want to be explicitely clear about the events being imaginary da'i in these examples is to be put inside the fau phrase:

1. fau da'i da denotes that the event in this phrase is possible, may/can possibly happen.
2. fau da'i ro da - the event would necessarily happen.
3. fau da'i so'e da - the event is probable, will probably happen, is likely to happen.
4. fau da'i so'o da - the event is remotely probable, could/might happen.
5. fau da'i so'u da - the event is not likely, probably don't happen.
6. fau da'i no da - the event is not possible.

The difference between these is in the number of imaginary situations we take into account. We don't describe those situations, we just mark them as da (something) letting the context (or our listeners) decide what those situations are.

Lesson 7

Full conjunction system

Although we've got acquainted with conjunctions here and there it's time for a full analysis of connectives in Lojban. There are several types of them:

• logical connectives based on ja, je, ji, jo, ju
• prepositional based on prepositions suffixed with bo
• non-logical

Logical connectives

There are four basic words for logical connectives:

• ja = and/or
• je = and
• jo = only if
• ju = whether or not.

Placing na before a connective negates what is to the left of it.

Placing nai after a connectives negates what is to the right of it.

So if we take two parts: A and B then placing ja between them gives A ja B which means A or B or both of them while e.g. A jo nai B means either A or B but not both.

This system gives results that are purely logical but might not look intuitively usable. Some of them are used seldom. It is no need to try to understand why they produce such results so you can just learn them by rot.

• ja = A and/or B (not none)
• ja nai = A is the exclusive condition for B
• na ja = A only if B
• na ja nai = not both

• je = A and B (both)
• je nai = A but not B
• na je = not A but B
• na je nai = neither A nor B (none)

• jo = A if and only if B (both or none)
• jo nai = either A or B (not both neither none)
• na jo = either A or B (not both neither none)
• na jo nai = A if and only if B (both or none)

• ju = A whether or not B (A, and perhaps B)
• ju nai = A whether or not B (A, and perhaps B)
• na ju = doesn't influence (not A, but perhaps B)
• na ju nai = doesn't influence (not A, but perhaps B)
• se ju = perhaps A, and B
• se ju nai = perhaps A but not B

As you can see some produce synonymous results and se is used only for ju because in other cases it leads to no effect in meaning.

Now let's learn about mostly useful applications of logical connectives to different stuctures.

Logical connectives for nouns

Here are the basic operators combining two words: this and that.

• ti ja ta = this and/or that, this or that or both of them
• ti je ta = this and that
• ti jo ta = this only if that
• ti ju ta = this whether or not that

Some other operators are based on these vowels combined with negatives:

• ti ja nai ta = this if that
• ti je nai ta = this and not that
• ti jo nai ta = either this or that
• ti ju nai ta = this whether or not that (i.e. the same as with ju)

• ti na ja ta = this only if that
• ti na je ta = not this but that

The most common conjunction for nouns is je (and). Here's an example:

mi ralte pa lo gerku je re lo mlatu

I keep one dog and two cat.

I've got a dog and two cats.

This is actually a contracted way of saying It is true that I have a dog; it is true that I have two cats, or in Lojban,

mi ralte pa lo gerku .i je mi ralte re lo mlatu

We can also use ja (and/or) here. For example,

mi ba vitke lo mi mamta ja lo mi tamne

I future visit the me mother OR the me cousin

I'll visit my mother or my cousin.

This leaves open the possibility that I will get round to visiting both of them at some point. If I want to say that that I will visit either my mother or my cousin but not both, I need jo nai (either/or). This is actually a negative only if, which sounds confusing, but is quite simple. If and only if I do not visit my cousin, I will visit my mother implies that, if I visit my cousin, I will not visit my mother, and vice versa; so I will visit either my mother or my cousin but not both. So we have

mi ba vitke lo mi mamta jo nai lo mi tamne

I future visit the me mother exclusive-or the me cousin

I'll visit either my mother or my cousin.

As jo means only if, I will visit my mother if (and only if) I visit my cousin would be mi ba vitke lo mi mamta jo lo mi tamne. If, for some strange reason, I want to use simple if and say that I will definitely visit my mother if I visit my cousin, but I may visit her anyway, I need another negative: ja nai:

mi ba vitke lo mi mamta ja nai lo mi tamne

ja nai = if

And ju means whether or not. In this way I can say

mi ba vitke lo mi mamta ju lo be mi tamne

I future visit the me mother whether-or-not the of me cousin

I'll visit my mother whether or not I visit my cousin.

Logical connectives for compound verbs

As we've seen before, we can put two or more verbs into a verb relation, getting a compound verb (tanru), and optionally convert it into a noun using lo or similar particles:

lo xunre cukta

a red book

The first element of the compound verb modifies or restricts the second element, in some unspecified way. What happens if there are three or more elements, though? Like many other features of Lojban grammar, tanru follow a left-grouping rule, which means that the element on the far left modifies the next one, then those two together modify the next, and so on. For example,

lo melbi xunre cukta means a beautifully red book

But usually we need something like beautiful red book. Thus, we have two adjectives. We need to connect them together like: beautiful and red book.

The simplest method for that is just to use a logical conjunction and say

lo barda je xunre cukta

A (big and red) book

A big red book.

la .alis. cu nelci ro lo xajmi ja melbi nanmu

Alice likes all (funny and/or beautiful) man

Alice likes men who are funny or handsome (or both).

Let's say that Alice finds the qualities of humor and good looks attractive but incompatible — she likes Woody Allen and Steven Seagal, but thinks a mixture of the two would be just too much. We would then say

la .alis. cu nelci ro lo xajmi jo nai melbi nanmu

Alice likes all (either funny or beautiful) man}

Alice likes men who are either funny or handsome (but not both).

On the other hand, Jasmine is turned on by funny men, and doesn't care about their looks at all. Woody Allen would do fine, but Steven Seagal wouldn't stand a chance unless he could tell a few jokes (funnier than Schwarzenegger's, preferably.) What we need here is

la .jasmin. cu nelci ro lo xajmi ju melbi nanmu

Jasmine likes all (funny whether or not beautiful) man

Jasmine likes funny men, whether they are handsome or not.

Logical connectives for phrase tails

.i la .bob. pu klama la .kalifornias. je cu pu stali la .kalifornias. ze'a lo nanca be li ci
Bob went to California, and stayed in California for three years.

When the first nouns of two or more connected sentences are the same we don't have to repeat them. This would look awkward:

.i la .bob. pu klama la .kalifornias. .i je la .bob. pu stali la .kalifornias. ze'a lo nanca be li ci
Bob goes to California, and Bob stays in California during three years.

So yes, we can express the same in a more concise way. We're keeping the subject who does or is something constant, and changing the rest of the sentence.

The first nouns coinciding all those sentences are called "the head of the phrase", and the remaining part, the verb relation with its trailing nouns, is called "the tail of phrase". As you remember those two parts are separated with cu' (we can omit cu only if the last noun of the head is a pronoun like mi).

For separating phrases in the tail we use vau plus an appropriate conjunction.

Our first sentence in this section can be made even more laconic if we move first two nouns to the head:

.i la .bob. la .kalifornias. cu klama je cu stali ze'a lo nanca be li ci
Bob went to California, and stayed there for three years.

As you can see the phrase tail conjunction version of je is je cu.

Logical connectives for sentences

To connect sentences we place conjunctions next to .i. So

.i la .alis. cu nelci ro lo xajmi nanmu .i jo nai la .alis. cu nelci ro lo melbi nanmu

Either Alice likes funny men, or Alice likes handsome men.

.i mi djuno lo du'u do vi zvati .i na ja mi dasni no da

You read the first sentence: I know that you're here. Then you get the conjunction:If that were the case, I would wear nothing. You didn't know in advance that the first sentence was going to be an if. This is unlike the case in English (and natural languages in general), where the if comes right at the start of the first sentence, and gives you plenty of warning about what's coming up.

A more complete example. (notice how we Lojbanize the name "Romeo": combination "eo" is impossible in Lojban so we used "e'o" and added a consonant in the end for his name).

1. la .rome'os. cu prami la djuliet .i je la djuliet cu prami la rome'os

   Romeo loves Juliet and Juliet loves Romeo.

   means that both statements are true, i.e. Romeo and Juliet love each other.

2. la .rome'os. cu prami la djuliet .i ja la djuliet cu prami la rome'os

   Romeo loves Juliet and/or Juliet loves Romeo.

   means that one of them loves the other, and perhaps both of them do.

3. la .rome'os. cu prami la djuliet .i jo nai la djuliet cu prami la rome'os

   Either Romeo loves Juliet or Juliet loves Romeo.

   Here either Romeo loves Juliet (but Juliet doesn't love him) or Juliet loves Romeo (but he doesn't love her).

4. la .rome'os. cu prami la djuliet .i ja nai la djuliet cu prami la rome'os

   Romeo loves Juliet if Juliet loves Romeo

   means that if Juliet loves Romeo, he definitely loves her, but he may love her anyway (the only outcome which is impossible is that Juliet loves Romeo but he doesn't love her).

5. la .rome'os. cu prami la djuliet .i jo la djuliet cu prami la rome'os

   Romeo loves Juliet only if Juliet loves Romeo.

   means that if Juliet loves Romeo, he loves her, and if she doesn't love him, he doesn't love her.

6. la .rome'os. cu prami la djuliet .i ju la djuliet cu prami la rome'os

   Romeo loves Juliet whether or not Juliet loves Romeo.

   ju is a special case, taking the meaning "whether or not"’ — in other words, it emphasizes that the second value does not affect the truth of the sentence.

Asking about conjunctions

• How can you tell someone is a computer programmer?
• You ask them Will you drink tea or coffee?, and they answer Yes.

In natural languages, that kind of answer is liable to get you a clip around the ears. That is because natural languages are run not only by logic, but also by social conventions. And one of the most important social conventions about language (Gricean informativeness, for those taking third year linguistics courses) is that, whatever you say, you should say enough to fully inform your listener about what's going on. If I ask Do you drink tea or coffee?, I need that information in order to prepare you a cup of coffee to your liking. Answering me yes doesn't give me much to go on.

As far as strict logic is concerned, though, Yes is the only proper answer, as computer programmers (and logicians, and Lojbanists) discover much to their amusement — and to the irritation of the rest of the world. That is because the question is phrased as a yes/no question; and or, in the question, does not behave any differently as a logical conjunction than and.

What you should actually be asking, if you want to be logically correct, is Identify which of the following you drink: tea, coffee.

You could say that, but it's not much like Lojban's fill-in-the-slot approach. Instead, Lojban sneakily asks you to fill in a slot you might not have expected: not the ‘tea’ slot, or the ‘coffee’ slot, but the conjunction slot:

.i do pinxe lo tcati ji lo ckafi

You drink tea ___ coffee.

By filling in the slot, you get to pick what you want. If you say je, you are saying the sentence .i do pinxe lo tcati je lo ckafi — in other words, you will drink both. If you say je nai, you are using the "and not" conjunction, which negates what follows it: so you are saying I will drink tea, and not coffee. If you want to negate what went before the conjunction instead, you use na je and you are saying I will drink not tea, and coffee (or, as is more usual in English, not tea, but coffee) — which means that you are picking only coffee. If you want neither, you can negate both sides: na je nai. You can still be unhelpful with your response: ja would leave us right where we started, for instance. But at least this way you have a logically consistent way of picking alternatives presented to you.

You can ask questions in the same way about the other kinds of conjunctions we have looked at. The interrogative conjunction for phrase tails is fa ji, for sentences - .i ji.

'yes/no' questions with ji

There is another method of asking 'yes/no' questions. If the verb relation consists of only one verb word you can use repeat that verb word two times linking it with ji:

pei do nelci lo tcati = je'u

Do you like tea? - Yes.

do nelci ji nelci lo tcati = je

When using such method

• yes is je
• no is na je nai

Forethought conjunctions

mi nelci la Alis na je la Bob
I like Alice not and Bob
I don't like Alice but I do like Bob.

The second sentence means the same as the first although it may sound a bit weird for English speakers ("I like Alice not...")

So if you don't like such linking of sentences hard to grasp or use you can either use the first sentence or use forethought conjunctions.

Forethought conjunctions are used to identify the logical relation between two terms by being placed in front of the first term, rather than in between the two.

.i mi djuno lo du'u do vi zvati .i na ja mi dasni no da

The problem here is, the logical version of if denies what comes before it. So in effect, you're getting the first statement, quite normally, and then the surprise: Either that's not true, or this is true. Things are just as bad for other conjunctions denying what comes before them:

mi nelci lo bakni na je lo jipci
I like not the beef, but the chicken.

But look at what the Lojban is actually saying:

I like the beef — NOT! and the chicken.

There was a vogue in the '90s of putting NOT! at the end of sentences in American English (see Wayne's World.) This was a joke, and the reason it was a joke is that saying a sentence isn't true after you've already said it isn't exactly being helpful.

So if we're going to use logical conjunctions in Lojban, and are obligated to pull NOT!-tricks like this, the Lojban listener can understandably get frustrated. Once again, though, Lojban has an answer. With forethought conjunctions, you can indicate the logical relationship between two terms in front of the first term. You still need a word separating the two terms, to show what is being logically connected. But now you know in advance what that logical connection is.

If nouns are involved, the forethought conjunction is formed by placing the particle ga before the logical conjunction. The two nouns are then connected with the particle gi. So the forethought version of mi je do is

ga je mi gi do

Here, ga je means that the two nouns coming up are connected with and, while gi indicates that what follows is the second noun in the relation.

The real usefulness of these forms comes out in the NOT!-conjunctions we've just seen. If you want to give some warning when choosing the chicken instead of the beef, you can now say

mi djica ga je nai lo bakni gi lo jipci

Forethought conjunctions can be followed by nai, just like their afterthought counterparts.

If you wanted to say beef, not chicken, you would put nai after the gi:

mi djica ga je lo bakni gi nai lo jipci

If you're connecting phrases, as it turns out, you still use ga je or their friends. If you don't follow ga je + noun immediately by gi and another noun, then Lojban grammar assumes that you're connecting not nouns any more, but phrases. So here is our forethought version of the problematic sentence:

.i ga ja nai mi djuno lo du'u do vi zvati gi mi dasni no da
If I know that you are here, I will wear nothing.

You'll notice that there is no second .i here. Two phrases connected by ga ja nai belong to the same sentence. What's coming up after the gi is a separate phrase, so we don't need to separate it out with .i.

This can actually turn out handy in beating Lojban precedence:

.i la .flufis. cu ractu .i je ro lo ractu ze'i jmive .i la .flufis. se ni'i ze'i jmive
Fluffy is a rabbit, and rabbits live not long. Fluffy therefore lives not long.

We should be able from that to say

.i la .flufis. cu ractu .i je ro lo ractu ze'i jmive .i se ni'i bo la .flufis. ze'i jmive

Right? Actually, no we can't: bo has the function of connecting sentences through prepositions, because it connects sentences on its own. And when it does, it connects them tighter than .i je does. This means that .i se ni'i bo connects only to the immediately preceding sentence — not to the preceding sentence pair! So Fluffy's death is presented as a consequence of rabbits not living long — not a consequence of both rabbits not living long and Fluffy being a rabbit.

However, if we put the two verb phrases in a single sentence, then none of this is an issue: the conclusion will attach to both phrases, but will still attach to a single sentence:

.i ga je la .flufis. cu ractu gi ro lo ractu ze'i jmive .i se ni'i bo la .flufis. ze'i jmive

There is also a forethought conjunction for compound verbs: these conjunctions are formed by placing gu before the conjunction vowel (connecting the second compound part with gi.) So if we want to say that Alice fancies men that are, if funny, then also handsome, the afterthought version is

la .alis. cu nelci ro lo melbi na ja xajmi nanmu

To make this slightly (but only slightly!) more comprehensible, we can put this in forethought mode:

la .alis. cu nelci ro lo gu ja nai melbi gi xajmi nanmu

There are no forethought versions of phrase tail conjunctions. In practice, however, two phrases connected by ga je can be phrase tails just as easily as a full phrase: there is no real distinction in meaning between the two.

Old conjunction system

In old Lojban style conjunctions were a bit different. It's no mistake to still use them. They don't contradict the current system once you know the correspondencies.

To use the old system one has to change ja to .a for connecting nouns, use ja for joining only parts of compound verbs, change fa ja to gi'a for connecting phrases inside one sentence and so on. Here are the current to the left and the old conjunctions to the right in each pair of columns:

nouns

verb phrases

forethought in tanru

tanru

forethought in other places

ja

.a

ja cu

gi'a

gu ja

gu'a

ja

ja

ga ja

ga

je

.e

je cu

gi'e

gu je

gu'e

je

je

ga je

ge

ji

ji

ji cu

gi'i

gu ji

gu'i

ji

je'i

ga ji

ge'i

jo

.o

jo cu

gi'o

gu jo

gu'o

jo

jo

ga jo

go

ju

.u

ju cu

gi'u

gu ju

gu'u

ju

ju

ga ju

gu

The system has many more words to remember that's why it is out of favor.

Notice that in the old system gu has another meaning: it was what ga ju is now. And ga is what ga ja is now. However, this is okay. It is always possible to comprehend what meaning of ga and gu is used even if you mix two styles together in one sentence.

Lesson 8. Structuring text

Emphasis

To emphasize a word we would use stress in spoken English, and italics or capitals in written English.

In Lojban we use a separate word ba'e.

Like interjections, this word can go pretty much anywhere in a Lojban sentence, but it emphasizes the word that follows it, rather than what precedes it.

mi ba'e nelci lo spageti
I do like spaghetti.

• 

  spageti - … is spaghetti

Paragraphs and separating sentences

ni'o works exactly like .i but starts a new paragraph. Paragraphs are usually associated with new topics.

It is normal to use in speech only .i to separate sentence but you might want to use ni'o especially in a written text to structure it.

to … toi for parenthetical remarks

Comments that we place inside parentheses in English text are formed using the particle to instead of the left parenthesis and toi instead of the right parenthesis:

ti poi to vi'onai do mi djica nai lo drata toi plise cu fusra
This (no, I don't want another one!) apple is rotten.

ti = this

djica = to desire

drata = to be different from …

plise = x₁ is an apple

fusra = x₁ rots or decays with agent x₂

Such parenthetical remarks can go anywhere interjections can — meaning pretty much anywhere in a Lojban sentence. With parentheses, just like with quotes, you need to know where the parenthesis starts, and where it ends.

Advanced interjections

Discursives

A special group of interjections carry information about how a particular word or phrase fits in with everything else you're saying.

We've seen one such interjection already: ku'i, which means but, however. This means that whatever it is attached to contrasts with what you've been saying. It usually applies to a whole sentence (so normally you'll see it next to .i), but it can apply to a single word: .abu na je ku'i by. is the proper Lojban for Not A, but B. Let's study other interjections.

.i mi venfu do doi melbi je ji'a lo cmalu gerku pe do
I'll get you, my pretty — and your little dog, too!

ji'a means additionally, also. This means that whatever it is attached to adds on to what you've been saying. Again, this can apply to individual words, as well as sentences:

mi si'a nelci do
I too like you. (although, this is not perfect English here)

si'a means similarly, too.

In some cases, there is nothing to either contrast or add to what you've said, because what you've said is the unique relevant case. In that context, you would use only in English. Because only is somewhat clumsy to express in terms of pure logic, Lojban allows another discursive as its equivalent: po'o. So

lo mlatu po'o cu nelci lo mlatnipa
Only cats like catnip.

lo mlatnipa = a cat-intoxicating catnip

If you wanted to say that something is not the only applicable case, then of course you'd say po'o nai.

There are several more discursives, but you won't seem them all that often. Some to watch out for, though, include:

Discursives

ba'u	exaggeration	ba'ucu'i	accuracy	ba'unai	understatement
sa'e	precisely speaking			sa'enai	loosely speaking
ju'o	certainly	ju'ocu'i	uncertain	ju'onai	certainly not
la'a	probably	la'acu'i		la'anai	improbably
ta'o	by the way			ta'onai	returning to the subject
zu'u	on the one hand			zu'unai	on the other hand

Kidding… and sarcasm

Interjections. Kidding and sarcasm

zo'o	Kidding, saying not-seriously, humorously	zo'ocu'i	saying dully	zo'onai	Seriously, Joke apart
xo'o	Sarcastically saying	xo'ocu'i	saying without sarcasm	xo'onai	Sincerely saying

• The interjection zo'o is used just like the smiley-face in e-mail, to indicate that you're being humorous when saying something, and it's used for much the same reason.
• The interjection xo'o is used the same way but for expression sarcasm.
• Correspondingly, zo'onai is used to show that the information is not a joke and xo'onai is for expressing sincerity.

In these two communication systems, it's difficult to work out whether someone is joking or not — in e-mail, because you can't hear the tone of voice that gives things away; in Lojban, because Lojban doesn't want to leave things to natural-language–based intuition when you want to explicitly express something (and also because it's used a lot on e-mail anyway). So hints like this are always welcome, and frequently taken advantage of.

Fixing errors in speech

When screwing a sentence up, knowing how to correct yourself is a good idea. You can use two words to delete your previous words:

• si - deletion: Deletes last word only.
• sa - deletion: Deletes back until next cmavo spoken.

The function of them is obvious: they delete words as if they have never been spoken. They do not work inside certain quotes (all quotes except lu...li'u), though, as that would leave it impossible to quote these words. Several si in a row deletes several words.

When you make a mistake while speaking, whether in your wording or your grammar, you don't normally bother to correct it — if you even realize you made a mistake in the first place. That's because natural languages are fairly redundant (for this very reason!). And we normally rely a lot more on context than on what we actually hear, anyway. If we do catch ourselves making an error, we stumble out a correction that will do the trick, without going into details like how many words should be cancelled: again, context is almost always more than adequate. So if I say

I downloaded and learned some English vocabulary. Er, Lojban vocabulary.

context and common sense dictate that Lojban vocabulary is meant to replace English vocabulary. But what if it was meant to replace some English vocabulary? Or downloaded and learned some English vocabulary? We wouldn't normally care, in natural languages.

But Lojban allows you to be more precise about what words you are correcting.

si erases the immediately preceding word. If you want to erase two words in a row, you say si si after them. So the correction above would be in Lojban

.i mi te benji je tadni lo glico valsi si si lojbo valsi

The problem with si is, you have to count words. This can get tedious, and you shouldn't have to keep a transcript of your words when you want to correct yourself.

The other correction word Lojban offers is somewhat more helpful: sa takes the word following it, which starts the phrase to serve as the correction. It then goes back in the sentence, looking for the last time you used a phrase starting with the same word or another word of the same class (selma'o). Once it finds the last such phrase, it replaces all text from that phrase up to sa with the phrase following sa. For example:

.i mi te benji je cu tadni lo sa .i mi tadni lo lojbo valsi

The correction following sa is a sentence; you know that, because the first word after sa is the sentence marker, .i. So the sentence following sa replaces the current sentence up to and including sa. Or consider:

.i mi mrilu fi do ca lo prulamdei sa ca lo reldei

The correction is ca lo reldei - on Tuesday. So what it replaces is everything from the last phrase beginning with ca: ca lo prulamdei - yesterday. The English version would be Yesterday I mailed you... actually, it was Monday.

Dealing with misunderstanding

- .i mi pu zi te vecnu lo flokati
- .i lo flokati ki'a
- I just bought a flokati.
- Flokati, huh?

ki'a = interjection inquiry: confusion about something said. "Huh? Whaat?? (confusion), pardon?"

When you don't understand what someone has just said — whether because you don't get what they were referring to, or you don't know the word, or the grammar confused you — you can repeat the word or phrase you didn't get, and add ki'a as a plaintive request for clarification (so it's even better than Huh?, because you can point out exactly what made you say Huh?)

Here is a dialogue.

mi nelci lo kalci
ki'a ?

I like shit.
Whaat???

Note: Since zo quotes any word following it - any word - it turns out that zo ki'a doesn't mean zo? Huh? at all, but The word ki'a. To ask zo? Huh?, you'll have to resort to zo zo ki'a.

Lesson 9

Masses and loi

• 

  loi prenu cu sruri lo jubme = People surrounded the table.

jubme = x₁ is a table

We can't say lo prenu cu sruri lo jubme because it's impossible that each person can surround the table.

In fact the mass (crowd) of people surrounded it. Thus, we say lo gunma be lo prenu cu sruri lo jubme.

There is a shortcut for lo gunma be lo wich is loi.

lo gunma be lo prenu cu sruri lo jubme
loi prenu cu sruri lo jubme
The mass of people surrounded the building.

Carrots alone and carrots together

• 

  lo najgenja - a carrot

Consider a sentence:

Three carrots weigh 60 grams.

Does it mean that each carrots weighs 60 grams or they weigh 60 grams if taken together?

In Lojban we can easily distinguish between these two cases:

ro lo ci najgenja cu grake li 60
Each of three carrots weigh 60 grams.

loi ci najgenja cu grake li 60
Three carrots weigh 60 grams in total.

(so that every carrots weighs 20 grams on average)

najgenja = x₁ is a carrot

grake = x₁ weighs x₂ grams

kiltygrake = x₁ weighs x₂ kilograms

As you can see there is an important difference between describing one object of a mass or describing the mass as a whole.

As we already know lo ci najgenja just means three carrots:

ko dunda lo ci najgenja
Give me three carrots.

And

ko dunda pa lo ci najgenja
Give me one carrot out of those three.

da poi and zo'e noi

Here is the difference between lo and da poi:

mi nitcu lo mikce = I need a doctor (any doctor) (implying "any doctor will do").

mi nitcu da poi mikce = There is a doctor whom I need.

We looked at lo, zo'e and da before. Here is a more complete expalanation.

• da poi refers to objects that exist. da always refers to the same object or event when used more than once in the same sentence or in several sentences connected to each other using connectives like ja, ba bo and their friends.

  So if I say da klama lo barja .i je da fenki you can assume I'm referring to the same man in both sentences.

• lo simply converts verbs to nouns. lo is similar to zo'e noi because it actually means someone who or something, which. As it is based on zo'e it can refer to different objects every time is used.

There are actually three words in da series: da, de, di. Use them if you need to refer to different objects in one discourse:

ci da poi gerku cu batci re de poi nanmu
Three dogs bite two men.

If you need more such words in one discourse add a suffix xi to them and then any number (which we can call an index).

Thus,

• da xi pa is the same as simple da,
• da xi re is the same as de,
• da xi ci is the same as di
• da xi vo is the fourth "something" and so on...

Dropping da

pa mlatu is the same as pa da poi mlatu and thus means there is one cat. The same is true for other numbers and verbs: not using lo is equivalent of using da poi. Compare:

lo re mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru = Two cats drink milk.

re lo mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru = Two of cats drink milk.

re mlatu cu pinxe lo ladru = There are two cats who drink milk.

Every time you use a number+verb a new da with new index is implied so

re mlatu cu viska re prenu is the same as re da poi mlatu cu pinxe re de poi prenu (notice da and de).

Another example:

re bruna be mi cu clani means
I have two brothers and they are tall.

clani = x₁ is long/tall

Topic and comment. zo'u

Sometimes it is useful to show the topic of a phrase and then say a comment about it:

lo finpe zo'u mi nelci lo salmone
As for fish I like salmon.

zo'u ends the topic and starts the comment of the verb phrase.

zo'u is more useful when a pronoun like da is defined in the topic and then used in the comment:

da zo'u mi viska da
There is a thing such that I see it.

da poi gerku zo'u mi nelci da
For each ting that is a dog: I like it.
I like all dogs.

da de zo'u da viska de
There is da and de such that da sees de.

The two pronouns da and de tell us that there are two things which stand in the relationship that one sees the other. It might be the case that the supposed two things are really just a single thing that loves itself: nothing in the sentence rules out that interpretation, which is why the colloquial translation does not say Somebody sees somebody else. The things referred to by different pronouns of da series may be different or the same.

It is perfectly all right for these pronouns to appear more than once in the main verb phrase:

da zo'u da prami da
There is da such that da loves da.
Somebody loves himself/herself.

It is not necessary for a pronoun to belong to the main verb relation directly:

da zo'u lo gerku pe da cu viska mi
There is da such that the dog of them sees me.
Somebody's dog sees me.

Scope

ci da poi gerku cu batci re de poi nanmu
Three dogs bite two men.

The question raised here is, does each of the dogs bite the same two men, or is it possible that there are two different men per dog, for six men altogether? If the former interpretation is taken, the number of men involved is fixed at two; but if the latter, then the speaker has to be taken as saying that there might be any number of men between two and six inclusive. By using zo'u we can make our sentence more clear:

1. ci da poi gerku re de poi nanmu zo'u da batci de
For three da which are dogs, for two de which are men: da bites de.

Here we see that each of the dogs is said to bite two men, and it might be different men each time; a total of six biting events altogether.

How then are we to express the other interpretation, in which just two men are involved? We cannot just reverse the order of variables in the prenex to

2. re de poi nanmu ci da poi gerku zo'u da batci de
For two de which are men, for three da which are dogs, da bites de

for although we have now limited the number of men to exactly two, we end up with an indeterminate number of dogs, from three to six. The distinction is called a “scope distinction”: in the first example ci da poi gerku is said to have wider scope than re de poi nanmu, and therefore precedes it in the prenex. In the second example the reverse is true.

To make to scope equal we use a special connective ce'e connecting two nouns.

ci da poi gerku ce'e re de poi nanmu cu batci
ci gerku re nanmu cu batci
Three dogs [plus] two men, bite.

which picks out two groups, one of three dogs and the other of two men, and says that every one of the dogs bites each of the men. The second Lojban version uses forethought.

Four meanings of you

We've already seen two personal pronouns, mi and do, meaning I (or me) and you. However, you in English can mean four different things:

1. The one person I'm talking to.
2. A number of people I'm talking to.
3. The person or people I'm talking to and some other person or people.
4. Anyone (as in Money can't buy you love.)

Lojban gets round the confusion between (1) and (2) by using numbers. The most common way to express (2) is ro do = all of you (or Southern U.S. y'all). You can also use specific numbers: lo re do would mean you two (for example, once can start e-mails to their parents with coi lo re do). Notice that re do means two of you and re lo ci do means two of you three.

You can also use numbers with ko, e.g. ro ko klama ti - All of you, get over here.

Case (3) is expressed by the pronoun do'o - you and someone else. Case (4) is completely different: it's normally expressed by ro da = all da or ro lo prenu - all persons, but often you can just miss it out altogether (or place zo'e in that place).

"any" and "some" in examples

The words "any" and "some" are translated to Lojban using da poi or lo. Here are the most important meanings of these words. There is no need in memorizing the English names of those cases (like "irrealis"). Lojban is simple as you can see in the translations:

• Specific known:

da pu fonta'a .i ko smadi lo du'u da me ma kau

Somebody called. Guess who?

• Specific unknown:

mi pu tirna da .i ku'i mi pu kakne nai lo ka facki lo du'u da mo kau

I heard something, but I couldn't tell what it was.

• Irrealis:

.ei do troci bu'u lo drata

You must try somewhere else.

• Question:

xu da do pu jungau de

Did anybody tell you anything about it?

• Conditional antecedent:

fau da'i lo nu do viska su'o prenu vau, ko mi ba zi sai jungau

If you see anybody, tell me immediately.

• Comparative:

la .djon. cu zmadu ro da lo ka clani

John is taller than anybody.

• Direct negation:

la .djon. pu viska nai su'o prenu

John didn't see anybody.

• Anti-morphic:

mi jinvi lo du'u nai da djuno lo du'u ma kau danfu

I don't think that anybody knows the answer.

• Anti-additive:

lo banxa catni cu rivbi lo ka jdice da

The bank avoided taking any decision.

• Free choice:

ro da zo'u: .e'a do cinba da

You may kiss anybody.

• Universal free choice:

la .djon. pu cinba ro ma'urni'u poi lo xunre kerfa ke'a

John kissed any woman with red hair.

• Generic:

lo gerku cu se tuple vo da

Any dog has four legs.

• Indiscriminative:

mi za'o djica nai lo ka gletu lo slabu nai be mi

I don't want to sleep with just anybody anymore.

le is for specific things

mi nitcu le mikce = I need a specific doctor (when for example, I have my doctor Mr. Johnson in mind).

mi nitcu da poi mikce = There is a doctor whom I need (I might not have a particular doctor in mind).

mi nitcu lo mikce = I need a doctor/the doctor (I might have a doctor in mind but don't state it).

Thus the word le can go into any position lo can go. It works exactly the same. But le refers to specific objects or events, someone or something that I have in mind as with Mr. Johnson in this example. When we use le we enable our audience to pick out whom or what we are talking about and also we state something about that person or thing.

lo itself isn't as explicit. It's vague but sufficient in most cases. That's we use it more often.

We also might want to need to explicitly state that for example, I don't have a particular doctor in mind and any doctor would do:

ro da zo'u lo du'u da mikce cu nibli lo du'u mi nitcu da
For everyone : if he/she is a doctor then it implies that I need them.

Clearly, this lengthy construct might be needed really seldom.

Another example:

lo catra be la smit cu jai fenki
Smith's murderer is insane.

We can be more explicit:

le catra be la smit cu jai fenki
The killer of Smith is crazy.
This is when the speaker says this without having any particular person in mind, basing his claim solely on the particularly brutal manner in which Smith has been murdered.

ro da zo'u lo du'u da catra la smit cu nibli lo du'u da jai fenki
Whoever killed Smith, he is crazy.
Imagine Jones has killed him, has been charged with the murder and has been put on trial, where his behavior is distinctly odd. The speaker (having Jones in mind) utters the same sentence.

Negation

1. na negates the whole verb phrase when put immediately before the verb relation (verb relation). na is used to turn verbal phrases into negative statements, of the type it is not true that.
2. Combination na ku negates everything to the right of itself within the current verb phrase
3. How to negate only the verb relation? By moving the na ku to the rightmost end of the verb phrase.

Thus, it has a special grammar that may be useful sometimes.

na ku mi nelci la .ian.

means the same as

nai mi nelci la .ian.

and

mi na nelci la .ian.

It is not true that I like Yan.

I don't like Yan.

So we can put na ku or nai in the beginning of a phrase, or put na before the verb relation (verb relation) and all three phrases will have identical meaning.

What does go'i copy?

na and na ku are parts of the verb phrase (terms) unlike nai!

go'i doesn't copy interjections. Thus it doesn't copy nai from previous sentences:

- la bob cu prami nai la alis
- go'i

- Bob doesn't love Alice.

- He does [love].

However, na is copied by go'i.

- la bob na prami la alis
- go'i

- Bob doesn't love Alice.

- He doesn't [love, yes].

In order to say "No, he does love her" we need to use the word reverse to na - ja'a.

la bob na prami la alis
ja'a go'i

Bob doesn't love Alice.

He does.

This difference between how nai and na work can be useful in many places. You have a choice.

Negatives are a lot more complicated than they look, in both English and Lojban. Strictly speaking, mi na nelci la .ian. is true even if I've never heard of Yan (since it's pretty hard to like someone you know nothing about). Just as in English, if you ask someone if they like Yan, and they reply No because they haven't met him, they're being amazingly unhelpful — but not really lying.

Another unexpected effect compared to English not:

mi na nelci ro lo gerku means It is not true that I like each dog. However, to say I don't like any dogs. you say mi nelci nai ro lo gerku

So often we need our negation to be a little less powerful. In particular, it is useful to be able to say, not that the whole verb phrase is false, but only the verb relation. This means that there is some relationship between the nouns — but this verb relation isn't it.

na ku in the beginning of a phrase is the same as placing simple na just before a verb relation:

na ku lo mi speni cu ninmu

My spouse is not a woman.

speni = x₁ is married to x₂ under convention x₃

It states nothing about what my wife is, or if I even have a wife. It only states that I do not have a wife who is also a woman. This has an important implication: If the negation of a verb phrase is false, that phrase must be true:

na ku lo speni be mi cu na ninmu

must mean that I have both a spouse, and that she is a she. It is possible to use phrase negation in all phrases, even the implicit phrase of descriptive nouns. lo na prenu can refer to anything non-human, whether it be a sphinx, a baseball or the property of appropriateness.

Often when using na, it's a problem that it negates the entire phrase. If I say mi na sutra tavla bau lo glibau se ja'e lo nu mi dotco, I end up negating too much, and it is not clear that I wanted to only negate that I speak fast. The sentence could suggest that I in fact speak fast because of some other reason, for instance that I speak fast in French because I'm German. To express the sentence more precisely, I need to only negate that I speak fast, and not the other things. To only negate part of a phrase, na ku can be moved around the phrase and placed anywhere a noun can go. It then negates any noun, verb relation and preposition placed after it. When placed immediately before the verb relation, na ku is the same as na. Moving na ku from the left end of the sentence and rightwards effects any quantifiers in a certain way, as can be seen by this example:

na ku ro lo remna cu verba
It's not true that: All humans are children.

su'o lo remna na ku cu verba
For at least one human it's not true that: it's a child.

See that the na ku is placed before cu, since a noun can go only before, not after the cu. Had I only used na, it would have to go after cu - but that would have negated the entire verb phrase, meaning "It's not true that: At least one human is a child".

When the na ku is moved rightwards, any quantifier is inverted - that is: ro is turned into su'o. This is, of course, only if the meaning of the phrase has to be preserved. This means that when the na ku is placed at the end of the phrase, only the verb relation is negated but all the nouns and prepositions are preserved, as can be seen by these three identical phrases:

ckule = x₁ is a school at location x₂ teaching x₃ to students x₄ and operated by x₅

na ku ro lo verba cu tadni bu'u da poi ckule
It's not true that all children are students in a school.

su'o lo verba cu tadni na ku bu'u da poi ckule
Some children study in not a single school.

su'o lo verba cu tadni bu'u ro lo ckule na ku
Some children are for all schools don't study in them.

Scalar negation

While the mechanism of na ku resembles negation in English, it can be difficult to keep track of exactly what is negated and how that affects the verb phrase. For that reason, the construct na ku is rarely seen anywhere other than the beginning of a phrase. In most cases where more specific negation is needed people resort to a different method. This method, called scalar negation, is an elegant and intuitive tool. Using it, you effect only the verb relation, since the words used in scalar negation binds to the verb relation much like the word se. The name “scalar negation” is derived from the fact that the words which bind to the verb relation can be placed along a scale from affirmation over negation and to stating that the opposite case is true:

Word	Meaning
je'a	“Indeed”; affirmer
no'e	“Not really”, midpoint on the negation scale
na'e	“Non-“, negation on the scale
to'e	“anti-”, “dis-“, “mis-” etc.; opposite place on the scale

mi na'e nelci ro gerku
I other-than-like all dogs.

on the other hand, there is something that can be said about me and all dogs; but it's not that I like them. It isn't necessarily that I hate them: I might write poems about them, or prescribe medicine for them, or imitate them in polite company. But like them, I don't.

If you do want to say you feel the opposite of ‘like’ for all dogs, you can say

mi to'e nelci ro gerku
I anti-like (= dislike) all dogs.

to'e turns a verb relation into its opposite: to'e nelci is pretty much the same thing as xebni - to hate. And if you're indifferent, you can say

mi no'e nelci ro gerku
I am neutral-as-to-liking all dogs.

no'e indicates that you're neutral on the scale the verb relation indicates.

These words are not negators in the same sense as na. They do not state that a verb phrase is false, but makes a positive statement that a verb phrase is true – the same verb phrase, but with a different verb relation. This distinction is mostly academic, though. If, for example, I state mi na'e se nelci - I am non-liked, I actually state that some verb relation applies to me, which is also on a relevant scale with the verb relation nelci. Most of the time, we assume a scale where the positions are mutually exclusive like "like - dislike - hate", so mi na'e se nelci implies mi na se nelci. Therefore, the words no'e and to'e should only be used when the verb relation is placed on some obvious scale: lo speni be mi cu to'e melbi – My spouse is ugly makes sense, since we immediately know what the opposite of beautiful is, while mi klama lo to'e zdani be mi – I go to my opposite thing of home, while grammatical, leaves the listener guessing what the speaker's opposite of home is and should be avoided.

Negating only the verb relation

So as we've seen there are several ways to negate only the verb relation:

1. use nai after the verb relation if the verb relation consists of only one verb word
2. use na'e before the verb relation if the verb relation consists of only one verb word. This would imply the existence of a scale.
3. use na ku before a verb relation.

tu bajra mlatu nai means That is a running non-cat. tu bajra nai mlatu means That is a non-running cat. nai is applied only to the last verb of a compound verb

tu na'e bajra mlatu means That is a other-than-running cat. tu bajra na'e mlatu means That is a running other-than-cat. (making us wonder what a non-cat might be)

My spouse is not a woman (meaning that he is a male).
lo speni be mi cu na'e ninmu or lo speni be mi cu to'e ninmu. Using scalar negation here implies that he exists, which na did not.

My spouse is not really a woman.
lo speni be mi cu no'e ninmu The scale here is presumed to be from woman to man.

I don't speak fast in English because I'm German.
mi na'e sutra tavla bau lo glibau se ja'e lo nu mi dotco

When attempting to answer: “Is the king of the USA fat?”, all of these negations fail. While it's technically correct to negate it with na, since it makes no assumptions of that is true, it's mildly misleading since it could lead the listener to believe there is a king of the USA. For these scenarios, there is a metalinguistic negator, na'i.

na'i - metalinguistic negator. Something is wrong with assigning a truth value to the verb phrase.

Because na'i has the grammar of interjections.

lo na'i pu te zukte be lo skami cu palci
The sought goal (mistake!) of the computer was evil.

palci = x₁ is evil

This sentence protests that computers can seek a goal volitionally.

Quoting text in different languages

The particle zoi is a quotation mark for quoting non-Lojban text. Its syntax is zoi X. text .X, where X is a Lojban word (called the delimiting word) which is separated from the quoted text by pauses, and which is not found in the written text or spoken phoneme stream inside that quotation. It is common, but not required, to use the name of some letter, which corresponds to the Lojban name of the language being quoted:

zoi gy. John is a man .gy. cu glico jufra
“John is a man” is an English sentence.

where gy. stands for glico. Other popular choices of delimiting words are .kuot., a Lojban name which sounds like the English wordquote, and the word zoi itself. Another possibility is a Lojban word suggesting the topic of the quotation.

Lojban strictly avoids any confusion between things and the names of things:

zo .bob. cmene la bob.
The-word “Bob” is-the-name-of the-one-named Bob.

zo .bab. is the word, whereas la bab. is the thing named by the word. The particle la'e and lu'e convert back and forth between references and their referents:

zo .bab. cmene la'e zo .bab.
The-word “Bob” is-the-name-of the-referent-of the-word “Bob”.

lu'e la bab. cmene la bab.
A-symbol-for Bob is-the-name-of Bob.

Last two examples mean the same. But this is different:

la bab. cu cmene la bab.
Bob is the name of Bob.

and says that Bob is both the name and the thing named, an unlikely situation. People are not names.

The particle la'o serves to mark non-Lojban names, for example the Linnaean binomial names (such as "Homo sapiens"), which are the internationally standardized names for species of animals and plants.

Internationally known names which can more easily be recognized by spelling rather than pronunciation, such as Goethe, can also appear in Lojban text with la'o:

la'o dy. Goethe .dy. cu me la'o ly. Homo sapiens .ly.
Goethe is a Homo sapiens.

Using la'o for all names rather than Lojbanizing, however, makes for very cumbersome text. A rough equivalent of la'o might be la me zoi.

Everything expressed in text should also be expressed in speech and vice versa. Therefore, there cannot be any punctuation which is not pronounced. This means that Lojban has a wide range of words to quote other words. All Lojban convert a text into a noun.

lu ... li'u quote only text that is grammatically correct. To quote any Lojban text we use lo'u ... le'u quote instead.

xu lo'u je le'u lojbo sumtcita . i je'unai
Is "je" a preposition? No.

ma xe fanva zoi gy.What's up?.gy. la .lojban.
How to translate "What's up?" to Lojban?

zo'oi quotes next word only. Next word is identified by pauses in speech or whitespace/dot in writing:

ri pu cusku zo'oi Doh! .u'i
Ha ha, he said "Doh!"

There is also the word la'oi, which forms a one-word name but unlike la even out of non-Lojban words:

'la'oi Safi glico nanmu. It's his name.
Safi is an English guy. .i lu'e ri cmene ri

The word me'oi converts next word into a verb even if it's not a Lojban word. It is used to create necessary verb words on the fly or when you forget a Lojban verb:

lo xirma ca me'oi gallop
The horse gallops

General use of zo'oi, la'oi and me'oi is problematic. You should be aware that the word following zo'oi should not include a period, a glottal stop or a pause. For example, the following sentence is not correct:

mi penmi la'oi Mei Li is not correct since la'oi attaches only one word, Mei.

'la'oi uli.uli zgike tutci for Uli uli is a musical instrument is not correct since la'oi takes only the first word before the dot: "uli" ("`uli`uli" is a Hawaiian musical instrument).

Infinitives and ce'u

The particle ce'u is used for referring to the noun from the outside verb:

mi gleki lo ka ce'u prami means the same as
mi gleki lo nu mi prami
I am happy that I love, I am happy of loving (someone).

mi gleki lo ka prami ce'u means the same as
mi gleki lo nu prami mi
I am happy that someone loves me, I am happy of being loved (by someone)

There is also a rule that the first omitted noun in the embedded phrase is automatically assigend the value of ce'u if ka is used in the beginning of the embedded phrase. So we can make the first sentence shorter:

mi gleki lo ka prami means the same as
mi gleki lo nu mi prami
I am happy that I love, I am happy of loving (someone).

mi gleki lo ka prami ce'u means the same as
mi gleki lo nu prami mi
I am happy that someone loves me, I am happy of being loved (by someone)

Notice we can't do that for the second sentence. In order to omit ce'u there you need to somehow fill the first noun so that ce'u goes to the next unfilled noun:

mi gleki lo ka zo'e prami means the same as
mi gleki lo nu prami mi
I am happy that someone loves me, I am happy of being loved (by someone)

For most verbs ce'u in their event places refers to the first place of the verb:

In mi gleki lo ka ce'u prami the particle ce'u refers to mi.

For zmadu and mleca the particle ce'u refers equally to the first two places:

In mi zmadu do lo ka ce'u clani (I am lengthier/taller than you) ce'u refers both to mi and do.

A very special case is simxu that has in its second place two ce'u.

mi jo'u do simxu lo ka ce'u ce'u prami
You and I love each other.

The first place of simxu is one or several nouns connected with jo'u.

The second place of simxu is an abstraction. The first two unfilled places take have ce'u implied. So you can remove both ce'u in this example:

mi jo'u do simxu lo ka prami
You and I love each other.

ka and ce'u are also used to express infinitives:

mi djica lo ka pinxe or mi djica lo nu mi pinxe
I want to drink.

ra nitcu nai lo ka co'e
He does not have to do this.

co'e - elliptical/unspecified verb. Often translated with this, that, it.

ma pu co'e
Who did it?

mi curmi lo nu do co'e
I will give you permission to do it.

So co'e is a verb that is known from context. mi co'e might mean I am doing you know what, or You know who I am.

While zo'e is the ‘don't care’ noun, co'e is the ‘don't care’ verb. For example, when I say mi klama lo barja, I'm not bothering to specify my point of origin, route, or vehicle. And when I say mi co'e lo barja I don't specify what I'm doing to the bar, probably I'm visiting it. So mi co'e lo barja means something like I thingummy the bar: the bar and I are in some relationship, but I'm not bothering to say what it is. I might be going to it, coming from it, sleeping in it, refurbishing it, or hearing about my neighbor getting drunk in it once. It just doesn't matter enough for me to say what.

The verb djica requires us to specify an event that one desires.

mi djica lo nu mi citka lo plise

I want to eat an apple.

Okay, but usually we just say in English I want an apple. We can't desire the apple itself, we want to do something with it.

Here we can omit the second mi and replace the verb to eat with co'e.

mi djica lo nu co'e lo plise

I want something to do with an apple.

So I let it be up to context what abstraction about the apple I desire.

There is a compact abbreviation for lo nu co'e which is tu'a:

mi djica tu'a lo plise

I want an apple.

tu'a takes a noun and converts it to an elliptical abstraction which has something to do with that noun. One always has to guess what abstraction the speaker means by tu'a + the noun, so it should only be used when context makes it easy to guess.

Another example:

gasnu = x₁ does/brings about x₂ (volition not implied)

za'a do gasnu tu'a lo skami

I see that you make the computer do something.

There are situations where you cannot use tu'a, even though it would seem suitable. These situations are when I don't want the resulting noun to be an abstraction, but a concrete noun. In this case, one can use zo'e pe or its abbreviation zo'ei.

mi djuno zo'ei do or mi djuno zo'e pe do
I know about you, I know something about you

we - different ways of saying that

mi'ai = I and at least one other person (corresponds to English "we")

The word we (mi'ai) is vague. Sometimes we might want to use more precise words:

mi'o = you and I

mi'a = we without you

ma'a = you and I and another/others

Unlike English some languages have separate words for that too. Not surprisingly, Lojban has such words too, although you are always free to revert back to mi'ai, which might be more comfortable sometimes.

mi = I or the speakers

Oddly enough, mi can also mean we. Lojban makes no distinction between singular and plural by default. So if several people are speaking all together, mi (which refers to the one or more speakers) is perfectly correct for we. In practice, you'll usually get mi used like that when one person is presuming to speak (or more often, to write) on behalf of others.

Some examples:

mi prami do
I love you.

mi'a penmi do ti'u li ci
We'll meet you at three o'clock.

ma'a remna
We are all human.

mi djica lo nu do cliva
We want you to go away.

mi'ai prami la .bob.
We love Bob.
(The sentence just states there are several people loving Bill including the speaker. It's not known if "we" includes the listener)

Internal prepositions

Using be you can attach not only the default places of verbs but even prepositions:

lo vi xatra be de'i li vo cu se mrilu de'i li ze
This letter, dated the 4th, was mailed on the 7th

A date tagged with de'i applies only to the xatra. In lo vi xatra de'i li vo cu se mrilu de'i li ze it would apply to the whole verb phrase, not to the letter. What we want to say is that the former date applies just to the letter, and the latter date applies to the mailing of the letter. This means that the 4th, as a date, applies only to the verb lo xatra, and not to the entire phrase.

Another example is

fi'e = preposition: authored by .... The same as fi'o finti

fi'e, like by in English, tends to apply only to specific things, and not to events: you say a book by Dickens or a sonata by Mozart, not Jim went to the zoo, by Norman Mailer. (OK, you can say "Jim Went To The Zoo", by Norman Mailer if "Jim Went To The Zoo" is the name of a book. But then by Norman Mailer is still attached to a thing, and not to an event). So fi'e is almost always used as an internal noun. This means you can say

lo cukta be fi'e la .dikens.
a book by Dickens

However, in

la .oliver.tuist. pe fi'e la .dikens. cu mutce xamgu
"Oliver Twist" by Dickens is very good.

we use pe to attach the preposition to the whole noun (the name la .oliver.tuist. in this case).

Another frequently used alternative is to use finti which fi'e is derived from:

la .oliver.tuist. poi la .dikens. cu finti ke'a cu mutce xamgu or
la .oliver.tuist. poi la .dikens. cu finti cu mutce xamgu
"Oliver Twist" by Dickens is very good.

She is a teacher and She is the teacher

What the Lojban for is is?

Most of the time there isn't one. In most cases is makes a noun work like a verb in English. In Lojban even such concepts as cat (mlatu), person (prenu), house (dinju), home (zdani) are all verbs. Only pronouns work as nouns by default.

There is an interesting feature, though. As we remember me transforms nouns to verbs.

ra ctuca
He teaches.

ra me lo ctuca
He is a teacher.

Thus the word me actually changes the meaning a bit and better reflects English sentences where the main relation is a noun.

The verb du, to be equal to, gives us the third meaning in this series:

ra du lo skiji
He is the teacher.

He is the teacher might imply the teacher we have been searching for or talking about.

Thus me and du reflect what in English we use the verb to be/is/was for.

Other examples: Template:TalkquoteRed {{muplila .renas. cu me lo mensi be mi
Rena is my sister.}}

mi du la .nik.
I am Robin (or Nick.) (the one you needed)

la jasmin poi du lo pendo be la .kevin. cu vi zvati Jasmine, who is Kevin's friend, is here.

me is often useful for converting pronouns:

pei do djica lo nu do me mi'a
Do you want to be one of us?

noi du and poi du are typically used in Lojban to introduce alternate names for something. So they correspond to English namely, i.e. For instance, la .alis. cu penmi la xumske fanza noi du la .djang. - Alice met ‘Chemistry Annoyance’, namely Zhang.}}

Compound verbs in detail

The grouping of terms in Lojban grammar is particularly important when it comes to tanru (compound verbs). The way verbs group together in a tanru determines what that tanru means. For example,

bad music magazine

has in English two interpretations: a bad magazine about music, or a magazine about bad music. In Lojban, its equivalent

lo xlali zgike karni

has only the interpretation a bad-music magazine, because the first two verbs (xlali zgike - bad music) group together first. So it is important to be able to modify the grouping of verbs, so that we can make sure the tanru means what we actually intend it to mean. For that reason, Lojban has a couple of mechanisms in place for making tanru group together properly.

In English we use brackets to structure the text. Likewise for tanru we use ke' for the left bracket and ke'e for the right bracket.

lo xlali ke zgike karni means a bad {music-magazine}.

As you can see we separated xlali from the rest of the tanru and made it apply to the whole tanru. There is no need in ke'e in the end of the tanru since we already know that it ends here.

.i mi pu zi te vecnu lo xlali ke zgike karni .i to'e zanru la'o gy.Eurythmics.gy.
I just bought a bad music-magazine. It dissed the Eurythmics.

That's one way of grouping together verbs in tanru. The other way is to use a particle bo in a new role. When bo appears between two verbs, it means that those verbs group together more tightly than anything else. So an alternative way of saying bad {music magazine} is

lo xlali zgike bo karni = a bad music-magazine

bo here is similar to the hyphen in English translation. This means that zgike bo karni should count as a unit, to which xlali (bad) applies.

tighter connections

So bo makes the connections tighter.

la .jasmin. je la .alis. jonaibo la .bob.
Jasmine and (either Alice or Bob)

ke can also be used with connectives (though not with sentences; they have their own kind of bracket, tu'e ... tu'u.) So we could also say

la .jasmin. je ke la .alis. jonai la .ranjit.

Remember that the right bracket ke'e can be left out in most cases without changing the meaning (like in this case).

Forethought conjunction are also used a lot since they can eliminate the need in right brackets:

gaje la .jasmin. gi gajonai la .alis. gi la .bob.

Jasmine and either Alice or Bob

and

gajonai gaje la .jasmin. gi la .alis. gi la .bob.

Either Jasmine and Alice, or Bob}}

We don't need bo or ke with forethought conjunctions.

co for changing the order in compound verbs

There is another way of restructuring compound verbs.

mi fanva se jibri
I'm a professional translator

jibri = x1 is a job of x2

dotybau = x1 is German used by x2 to say x3

glibau = x1 is English used by x2 to say x3

If I wanted to say that I'm a professional translator from English to German, I could mess around with be, bei:

mi fanva be lo dotybau bei lo glibau be'o se jibri
I'm a professional translator from English to German

The fact that it was a compound verb could quickly be lost in speech due to the complicated structure of the sentence. Here, we can use the word co:

co - inverts the compound verb, making the rightmost verb word modify the leftmost instead of the other way around. Any previous noun fills the modified, any following noun fills the modifier.

mi se jibri co fanva lo dotybau lo glibau

It is the same phrase as the previous Lojban one, but much more easy to understand. Notice that any noun before the compund verb fills se jibri, while any following it only fills the modifying verb: fanva.

The strength by which two verbs are bound together with co is very weak – even weaker than normal compound verb grouping without any grouping words. This makes sure that, in a co-construct, the leftmost verb word is always the verb being modified, and the rightmost always modifies, even if any of those parts are compound verbs. This makes a co-construct easy to understand: {{mupliti pelxu plise co kukte
is read as ti (pelxu plise) co kukte, which is the same as ti kukte pelxu bo plise. This also means that a ke … ke'e cannot encompass a co.

However, ja cu, ja cu etc. bind even looser than co. This is in order to totally avoid confusion about which verb word binds to which in a ja cu-construct. The answer is simple: ja cu never emcompasses any verb groups.

How can you express "I am an important American buyer of computers" using a co?

Answer: mi skami te vecnu co vajni merko

If it's of any use, this is the list of different kind of verb word groupers ranked by strength:

1. bo and ke … ke'e
2. Logical connectives other than ja cu series
3. not using grouping words
4. co
5. ja cu series (phrase-tail afterthought connectives)

Lesson 10

More on relative clauses

Relative clauses are phrases like who doesn't like Ricky Martin, which I eat curry at and so on.

In Lojban you add a relative clause by attaching poi or noi to a noun.

So let's try this out. How would we say You talked to my sister — the one who doesn't like Ricky Martin — about economics? Let's take it by steps:

do pu tavla lo be mi mensi lo dinske
You talked to my sister about economics.

lo be mi mensi cu nelci nai la .rikis.martin.
My sister does not like Ricky Martin.

do pu tavla lo be mi mensi poi ke'a nelci nai la .rikis.martin. vau lo dinske
You talked to my sister who doesn't like Ricky Martin about economics.

Notice that it is possible to move be mi to the left of the verb mensi. This allows to attach poi to lo be mi mensi. In lo mensi be mi poi... the word poi will attach to mi: the sister of me who (I) ....

Also notice that we need to close the relative clause with vau so that lo dinske belongs to the main verb of our phrase: tavla, not the verb nelci inside the relative clause. Otherwise, lo dinske would be a noun of nelci and not tavla — which is not really what you want.

Here's another example:

mi klama lo gusta be lo kisto
I go to the Pakistani restaurant.

lo gusta be lo kisto cu berti lo tcadu
The Pakistani restaurant is north of town.

Here we can't attach poi berti lo tcadu (that is to the north of the city) to lo gusta as lo kisto doesn't allow us to do that. We also can't move lo kisto to the left as lo kisto gusta would create a a compound verb (tanru). In this case we just replace lo with zo'e and attached any number of relative clauses connecting them with je:

mi klama zo'e noi gusta lo kisto je poi berti lo tcadu

I go to something which is a restaurant of Pakistani cuisine and that is north of town.

You can use da/de/di if it is not used otherwise in the sentence (remember that the grammar of da and zo'e differs):

mi klama da noi gusta lo kisto je poi berti lo tcadu
I go to something which is a restaurant of Pakistani cuisine and that is north of town.

ke'a

We used ke'a in

do pu tavla lo be mi mensi poi ke'a nelci nai la .rikis.martin. vau lo dinske
You talked to my sister who doesn't like Ricky Martin about economics.

This ke'a replaces lo be mi mensi in the relative clause for brevity. We could as well say a bulkier:

do pu tavla lo be mi mensi poi lo be mi mensi cu nelci nai la .rikis.martin. vau lo dinske
You talked to my sister who doesn't like Ricky Martin about economics.

So ke'a is used in order not to repeat lo be mi mensi twice. We can't even use ri here instead of ke'a since ri refers to the last finished noun and then noun lo be mi mensi is not finished yet, since the relative clause is a part of the noun to which it is attached.

ra would be okay but it isn't particularly precise.

So the pronoun ke'a is like who and which in English. It points back to the noun to which the relative clause is attached. So now, we can make a stab at all four relative clauses in our example:

lo mensi be mi je poi ke'a na nelci la .rikis.martin.
My sister, such that she doesn't like Ricky Martin.
My sister who doesn't like Ricky Martin.

lo be mi mensi poi do viska ke'a ca lo prulamcte
My sister, such that you saw her at the restaurant during the immediately-preceding-night.
My sister whom you saw at the restaurant last night.

da noi gusta be lo kisto je poi ke'a berti lo tcadu
The restaurant of Pakistani things such that it is north of the city.
The Pakistani restaurant which is north of town.
(The je is needed, because what you're describing as being north is the restaurant, not the Pakistani cuisine it serves).

da noi gusta be lo kisto je poi mi citka lo cidjrkari ne'i ke'a
The restaurant of Pakistani things, such that I eat curry in it.
The Pakistani restaurant [that] I eat curry in.
The Pakistani restaurant where I eat curry.

To make things somewhat more succinct, there exists a convention that, when a relative clause is missing its ke'a, you fill it in at the first available empty place. Which means, if the phrase after poi has nothing in its x1 place, that's where the ke'a goes. If it has an x1 place but no x2 place, then that's where ke'a goes. (This way, poi-clauses look a little more like most languages' relative clauses, as they don't use a distinct word for ke'a and poi.) So our example phrases become:

lo be mi mensi poi nelci nai la .rikis.martin.

lo be mi mensi poi do viska ca lo prulamcte

da noi gusta be lo kisto je poi berti lo tcadu

da noi gusta be lo kisto je poi mi citka lo cidjrkari ne'i ke'a

The last sentence hasn't changed: the convention does not apply to non-default places (like prepositions and spatial ‘tense’ places), since they don't follow a predictable order. Template:Talkquote

Restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses

Restrictive relative clauses contain information that clarifies the meaning of a noun to which they are attached. They choose from the things of the same class those that correspond to certain properties described in that relative clause. Eliding such relative clause often leads to ambiguity or even changes its meaning.

In English they are not emphasized with commas:

ra pu co'a speni lo ninmu poi ra pu penmi bu'u lo zarci
He married a girl who he had met in the store
He married a girl (which one?) whom he had met ...
Removing the relative clause changes the meaning: He married a girl.

lo prenu poi damva'u nai cu clani zmadu renvi
People who don't smoke live longer
People (which ones?)...
Eliding the relative clause changes the meaning: People live longer

Non-restrictive relative clauses contain additional information about the noun to which they are attached. That noun is sufficiently defined by itself so that eliding relative clause doesn't change its meaning. In English they are traditionally emphasized with commas.

tu du la .alis. noi mi pu tadni ka'ai ke'a
This is Alice, whom I studied with.
This is Alice (what else can I say about her?)...
Eliding the relative clause retains the meaning: This is Alice.

In spoken English the distinction is often achieved using intonation or by guessing. Also in non-restrictive relative clauses that is not used.

Internal nouns and be

As be allows attaching to nouns other nouns as their place this means that you can nest noun inside noun inside noun, up to and including the point where you fry your brain.

This means, by the way, that you can nest noun inside noun inside noun, up to and including the point where you fry your brain. To hold off on frying your brain just a little, you need to be able to say this is where the list of nested noun stops — at least at the current level of nesting. To close the list of nouns attached with be we put the word be'o at the end:

lo xatra be la .ian. bei la .alis.
The letter to Yan from Alice

la .jasmin. cu mrilu ti la .bob.
Jasmine mails this to Bob

la .jasmin. cu mrilu lo xatra be la .ian. bei la .alis. la .bob.
Jasmine mails {Alice's letter to Yan} to Bob.

lo mrilu be lo xatra be la .ian. bei la .alis. be'o bei la .bob.
The one who mails {Alice's letter to Yan} to Bob.

lo mrilu be lo xatra be la .ian. bei la .alis. bei la .bob.
The one who mails {Alice's letter to Yan about Bob}.

More about possessions. po, po'e

We've covered pe and ne.

A construct sometimes used by Lojbanists is lo {noun} {verb}. This is equivalent to lo {verb} pe {noun}. For example, lo mi gerku is equivalent to lo gerku pe mi. However, this is okay only with pronouns. If you want to use a noun converted from a verb (for example, with lo) then it's advisable to use pe: lo gerku pe la .alis. = the Alice's dog.

You can see that the order is the other way around from English: lo gerku pe lo nanla looks more like the dog of a boy. Now, English uses both 's and of for this kind of association. The choice between the two is complicated, but basically depends on whether the ‘possessor’ is a person or not — which is why the dog of a boy sounds odd, as does English's verbs.

In Lojban you can move a pronoun to the left:

lo gerku pe mi is the same as lo pe mi gerku. This is literally The of me dog/my dog.

However, this applies only to pronouns, not to lo-nouns or la-names.

In short it's much safer to always use pe and put it after the noun to which it is attached: lo gerku pe la .alis. and lo gerku pe mi are most intuitive constructs

pe and ne are used as loose association only, like saying lo stizu pe mi - my chair about a chair which you sit on. It's not really yours, but has something to do with you. There is just a relationshop between the two nouns.

stizu = x₁ is a chair

If you want to say something is specific to that noun you can use po instead of pe.

lo gerku pe la alis can be applied to a street dog that Alice likes to play with.

But lo gerku po la alis can be applied only to a dog that, for example, was bought for her by her parents.

In many cases people prefer to use pe which is more vague rather than po.

Some other examples:

lo cukta po mi
My book

lo cipni po la .meilis.
Mei Li's bird

la .kokakolys. po do
Your Coca-Cola

Lastly, po'e is used for innate, intrinsic connections.

lo birka be mi or lo birka po'e mi = my arm

lo mamta be mi or lo mamta po'e mi = my mother

lo gugde po'e mi = my home country (a more precise analog is lo gugde poi mi pu jbena bu'u ke'a = country where .i was born)

As you can see, in many cases the second place of verb makes po'e unnecessary.

Because of all of that pe is used very frequent compared to po and po'e.

Resume. We have:

pe - restrictive relative phrase. "which is associated with..."

ne - non-restrictive relative phrase. "which is associated with..."

po - restrictive possessive relative phrase. "which is specific to..."

po'e - restrictive innate relative phrase. "which inherent to..."

Situation: "My garden"

ti me lo purdi pe mi .i mi cadzu bu'u py.	This is my garden. I walk in the garden.
.i mi tirna lo cipni poi sanga .i lo sance be cy. cu cladu nai	I hear birds singing. The sound of birds is not loud.
.i lo sance cu tolycladu .i lo rilti cu pluka .i lo tonga cu galto'a	The sounds is quite. The rhythm is nice. The tone is high.
.i tcima fa lo solri .i mi catlu lo tsani	The weather is sunny. I look to the sky.
.i mi viska nai lo solri .i lo dilnu cu fanta lo solri gusni	I don't see the sun. Clouds covers its beams.
.i ku'i mi ca'o ganse lo glare gau lo solri	But .i can still feel the heat of the sun.
.i mi viska lo plise tricu .i ri clani .i lo plise cu crino	I see apple trees. The trees are tall. The apples are green.
.i mi klama lo plise tricu .i mi ganse lo lenku ni'a lo tricu	I go to the apple trees. I feel cold under the trees.
.i mi jdice lo ka sumne lo plise .i mi sumne lo panci	I decide to smell an apple. I smell it's flavour.
.i lo panci cu pluka .i mi denzalvi lo plise	The flavour is pleasant. I chew the apple.
.i mi smaka lo plise .i ri titla	I taste the apple. It's sweet.
.i mi klama lo crane .i mi viska lo flora	I go forward. I see flowers.
.i mi co'a zutse tezu'e lo ka sumne lo panci be lo flora	I sit down to smell their flavour.
.i lo mlatu cu klama mi .i mi palpi lo mlatu	A cat comes to me. I touch the cat.
.i lo sefta be ri cu ranti je xutla .i loi kerfa cu xutla	Its surface is soft. loi kerfa is soft.
i mi co'a sanli .i lo purdi pe mi melbi	I stand up. My garden is beautiful.
.i mi cinmo ma .i lo ka gleki i mi cinmi lo ka badri nai	What are my emotions? Happiness. I feel that I am not sad.

Task. Answer these questions (close the right part of the table):

lo sefta be lo mlatu cu mo	xutla or ranti je xutla - What is the cat's surface? - Smooth, smooth and soft.
xu do cinmo lo ka badri	je'unai - Do you feel sad? - No.